Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito Jr. on Monday appeared to strive to save the U.S. Supreme Court's first major gun-rights case in nearly a decade from disappearing without a ruling on the scope of the Second Amendment.

Groups supporting broad firearm rights, critical of how lower courts have applied the Second Amendment, have urged the court to use the case to announce a tough standard or test that governments must meet in order for regulations to be upheld as constitutional.

Alito and Gorsuch dominated questioning of New York City Law Department's chief of appeals Richard Dearing, who argued there no longer was a live controversy for the justices to resolve in the case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York. Before the case was argued, New York scrapped its rule that set restrictions on the transport of firearms outside the city limits.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan pushed back at comments by Alito and Gorsuch that suggested the court could still issue a ruling on the New York regulations.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh did not ask any questions during the arguments. Kavanaugh's silence was somewhat surprising given his strong dissenting opinion in a 2011 Second Amendment case when he sat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In that ruling, Kavanaugh wrote a lengthy dissent explaining why he would strike down the District of Columbia's firearm registration requirement and ban on semi-automatic rifles.

The mootness issue surrounding the case arose after the justices agreed to review the New York case. The defunct restrictions limited the transport of guns—unloaded and locked in a container—from the home to any of seven designated shooting ranges inside the city. License holders could not transport their guns to shooting ranges or second homes outside of the city.

After the city eliminated those restrictions, the New York General Assembly, amending state law, said premises-license holders could transport their handguns to any location where they are lawfully authorized to have and possess such a weapon.

During arguments Monday, Gorsuch called the city's amended ordinance "herculean, late-breaking efforts to moot the case." Alito described it as a "quite extraordinary step" to attempt to moot the challenge.

But Ginsburg, questioning Kirkland & Ellis partner Paul Clement, lead counsel for the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, said the new state law blocks whatever the city attempted to do. "What's left of this case?" she asked. "Petitioners have gotten all that they sought."

Whether the challengers received all they asked for in their lawsuit was at the heart of the mootness arguments. Clement contended that if they had prevailed in the lower courts, they would have sought an injunction protecting against any future prosecutions for violations of the old law and other collateral consequences of that law.

Clement and Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall also argued that the challengers still might be able to ask for damages for economic losses flowing from the defunct regulation. But Dearing drew support from Ginsburg when he countered that the high court had never used a late damages request to save a case from mootness.

The challengers also contend the city's old law violates the Second Amendment, the commerce clause and the right to travel. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a district court ruling in favor of the city on all counts.

On the merits of the constitutional challenge to the defunct city restrictions, Clement and Wall urged the high court to adopt "text, history and tradition" as the constitutional test for gun regulations.

Clement said the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is not strictly limited to the premises.

Wall argued the justices' landmark Second Amendment ruling in 2008—District of Columbia v. Heller—said to start the constitutional analysis with text, history and tradition. History answers the question about the city's restrictions because, he claimed, "There is no historical analog" for those restrictions.

Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaking June 8, 2018. Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi / ALM

But Sotomayor called that test a "made-up new standard." Heller, she added, was very careful to say: "We treat [the Second Amendment] as any other constitutional provision."

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. on Monday asked few questions during arguments in the New York case and he gave no indication of where he might stand on the mootness and merits issues.

More than 40 amicus briefs have been filed by a broad range of gun rights groups, civil rights groups, victims of gun violence and others. Major U.S. law firms, representing various friend-of-the-court parties, were largely supportive of New York's regulatory scheme for firearms.

Wall argued for the Justice Department likely because Noel Francisco, the U.S. solicitor general, had recused. His former law firm, Jones Day, filed a brief on behalf of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.