You can't help but be interested in the only case being argued Tuesday at the US Supreme Court, as the Justices directly confront a Second Amendment case for the first time since 1939.

That's not a typo.  1939 was the last time the High Court had the chance to rule on a major Second Amendment case.

In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court "sidestepped" the matter back then, and really legal scholars haven't had much to chew on ever since.

Now comes the legal battle over a handgun ban in the District of Columbia, which has been forced to the Supreme Court.

The wacky part about this, is that no one knows what the outcome might be.

In other words, but the gun rights side and the gun control side could be big winners or big losers.  It's not often that so few people have so little feel for how the Court will deal with this issue.

People started lining up to hear the arguments on Monday afternoon, and I would expect a sea of protestors and interested onlookers (plus legions of bemused and confused tourists) to descend onto the sidewalks in front of the Court building.

If you wonder what all the fuss is about - read the text of the Second Amendment.  There are only 27 words, but it's the commas and the phrases that make it read in an odd manner.

It begins with "A well regulated militia" which leads some to argue that gun rights were conferred on state militias, not individuals.  Others of course claim that "individual" gun rights would never be slapped down by the Justices.

I'm not going to get into every zig and zag in this argument, because I'm no legal scholar.

But I do know that if the court were to deal a major setback to either side in this debate, it could provoke a media firestorm and throw guns back into the political arena for the 2008 Presidential race.

It used to be that guns were a staple of the primary process.  But no more.  We'll see in comign months whether that started to change on March 18, 2008.