Guns Out, Free Speech in at U.S. Supreme Court

• Just 13 provisions account for most of modern Supreme Court constitutional rulings, data show

• Multiple factors, not just preference of justices, lead to unequal treatment of the Constitution

The right to bear arms has gotten surprisingly little attention at the U.S. Supreme Court for an issue that has long divided Americans culturally and politically compared to the huge volume of cases it has heard around free speech and equal protection.

The disparity, highlighted in a Bloomberg Law analysis of data on the court, is one example illustrating the justices’ wide discretion over their docket and how they don’t treat all ...