The ballyhoo over the U.S. Supreme Court’s tiptoe around a Second Amendment decision this week might be a gun control celebration a little too soon.

The Supreme Court ruled this week in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York that changes made after the Court granted certiorari (agreed to hear the appeal) to the City of New York’s onerous ordinance and regulations rendered the case “moot.” That’s the ordinance that burdened the ability of the city’s gun owners to travel with lawfully owned, unloaded, and locked firearms to destinations outside the city.

While the result may be disappointing to Second Amendment advocates, the silver lining is that a Second Amendment day of reckoning may be dawning.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a well-reasoned dissent, which Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas (mostly) joined, for why the case is not moot. He wrote, “By incorrectly dismissing this case as moot, the Court permits our docket to be manipulated in a way that should not be countenanced.”

Justice Alito observed that one would have expected the City of New York to continue to forcefully defend its law, as it had in lower courts. “But once we granted certiorari, both the City and the State of New York sprang into action to prevent us from deciding this case,” he continued. “Although the City had previously insisted that its ordinance served important public safety purposes, our grant of review apparently led to an epiphany of sorts, and the City quickly changed its ordinance. And for good measure the State enacted a law making the old New York City ordinance illegal.”

Justice Alito noted that the Court has “been particularly wary of attempts by parties to manufacture mootness in order to evade review.” Regrettably, that is exactly what the City of New York successfully did in this case.

Had the Court reached the merits of the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment claims, the dissenting justices, at least, would have held the City’s ordinance violated the Second Amendment, calling it “not a close question.”

The true importance of the case, however, is not the fact that the City of New York dodged a proverbial bullet, but rather what Justice Alito and Justice Kavanaugh had to say about how the lower courts have applied the Court’s holding in Heller and McDonald.