The Scipio Files · argument map
Four cases, sixteen years, one test built and then contested by its own author. Heller (2008), Caetano (2016), Bruen (2022), and Rahimi (2024) argue across six contested questions about what the Second Amendment protects and who may lose it. Hover a card to see the assumption underneath it, click it for the full exchange, and watch where Justice Thomas breaks from the majority he wrote for two years earlier.
Color marks the side of the volley, not who is right. Roberts's Rahimi majority and Thomas's Rahimi dissent are tagged by the practical outcome each reaches, not by rhetorical register, see cards C5 through C9, and Lane D's note on why that lane has no independent regulation-side voice.
A caution before you count silences. Whether a side holds the last recorded word in a lane usually reflects the order the opinions were filed in, not which argument was stronger. In this dataset the individual-right side holds 9 of 13 last words, the regulation side holds 3, and Barrett's third position holds 1. Lane F, the choice between 1791 and 1868, is the one lane in this dataset that never actually argues to a clash, every card there flags the question as open rather than contesting it, so its single last word marks an acknowledged fork, not a settled exchange.
| Card | Question | Speaker | Answers | Move | Claim | Cite | Last word |
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