The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a New York state gun control law, setting a major precedent that expands the reach of the Second Amendment and puts existing firearm restrictions in other states into immediate legal jeopardy.

At issue in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen was a 1913 New York law that requires people to get licenses if they want to take guns outside of their homes. In order to get one of those licenses, a gun owner must show they actually need the weapon for self-defense.

In a 6-to-3 ruling, with Republican-appointed justices in the majority and Democratic-appointed justices dissenting, the court determined that New Yorks licensing requirement violates the Second Amendments guarantee of a right to keep and bear arms.

The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the lead opinion. The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different.

Back in 2008 , the court had said that the Second Amendment protects the right to own a gun, while allowing for certain restrictions on firearms use. With this new ruling, the court has effectively said the Second Amendment also protects the right to carry that gun in public, which means it will be more difficult to defend restrictions in court.

Nothing in the Second Amendments text draws a home/public distinction with respect to the right to keep and bear arms, Thomas wrote.

In a concurrence, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh made clear the decision applies only to states like New York where officials can choose whether or not to issue carry permits or where people who want permits have to demonstrate a need for them.

In other words, its fine if a state wants to require permits to carry a gun in public, just so long as getting that permit is nearly automatic.

But the distinction may not be as meaningful as it seems.

For one thing, the states with systems similar to New Yorks include California, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Together, they account for about one-fourth of the U.S. population.

In addition, Thomas wrote that lower courts need to be more vigilant about protecting Second Amendment rights by using a tougher standard tied to what governments have done in the past. That standard could create a foundation for challenging other gun limits in future, some scholars said on Thursday.

The new test Thomas announces ... is likely to make it more difficult for state and local governments to defend their firearms regulations, Cardozo Law Professor and Strict Scrutiny co-host Kate Shaw told HuffPost.

Among the regulations that could be tough to defend under Thomass new standard are key components of the bipartisan gun bill now under consideration in Congress.

That bill would provide new funding for red flag laws, which allow courts to take guns away from people who pose immediate threats. It would also prohibit gun ownership by domestic abusers, closing whats come to be known as the boyfriend loophole , allowing restoration of those rights only after five years.

The Courts Second Amendment ruling calls into question key parts of the Senate gun bill, Adam Winkler , a UCLA law professor and expert on firearm rights, posted on Twitter . Thomas says only gun regulations consistent with historical regulation of guns are permissible. Red flag laws, however, are a modern invention. So too bans on domestic abusers.

Of course, exactly what history says about gun laws is also contested territory. A major dispute in this case was over the relevance of prior restrictions on firearms, some of them going back hundreds of years to England and the meaning of common law there.

Thomas in his opinion dismissed the significance of those earlier regulations, saying they did not justify New Yorks law or many other attempts to limit firearm possession.

The Latest Legal Win In A Long Campaign

Thursdays ruling represents the latest victory in the decadeslong campaign by conservatives to develop intellectual arguments justifying a more expansive reading of the Second Amendment and, then, to fill the federal courts with judges sympathetic to those arguments.

Until relatively recently in American history, the dominant view among judges and legal scholars was that the Second Amendment was primarily about the right of states to maintain militias. In 1990, as conservatives were pressing the argument that it actually included a personal right to firearm ownership and possession, former Chief Justice Warren Burger called their argument a fraud on the American people .

But a conservative majority on the Supreme Court endorsed that argument in its landmark 2008 decision , as Justice Samuel Alito emphasized in his concurring opinion to Thursdays ruling.