Gun rights on Supreme Court’s agenda after mass shootings in Ga., Colo.

WASHINGTON — A possible expansion of gun rights is on the Supreme Court’s agenda, days after mass shootings in Colorado and Georgia.

The justices are meeting in private Friday to discuss adding new cases to their docket for the fall. Among the prospects is an appeal from gun rights advocates that asks the court to declare a constitutional right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-protection.

It’s the first major gun case to come before the court since Amy Coney Barrett became a justice in late October and expanded the conservative majority to 6-3.

The case had been scheduled before a shooter killed eight people at spa businesses last week in the Atlanta area and another shooter killed 10 people Monday at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

Georgia is among 21 states with Republican attorneys general calling on the court to take up the case and expand the rights of gun owners.

The court’s consideration of gun rights comes as President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress are pushing a variety of restrictions, including expanded background checks, that appear unlikely to win approval, for now.

The appeal comes from New York, which gun rights groups say is among eight states that make it difficult if not virtually impossible for people to get permits to carry guns in public. The other states are California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Paul Clement, a frequent advocate before the Supreme Court who represents challengers to New York’s permit law, said the court should use the case to settle the issue. “The nation is split, with the Second Amendment alive and well in the vast middle of the nation, and those same rights disregarded near the coasts,” Clement wrote on behalf of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and two New York residents.

Calling on the court to reject the appeal, the state said its law promotes public safety and crime reduction and neither bans people from carrying guns nor allows everyone to do so.

Federal courts have largely upheld permit limits.

On Wednesday, a panel of the federal appeals court in San Francisco rejected a challenge to Hawaii’s permit regulations in an opinion written by a conservative judge, Jay Bybee.

“Our review of more than 700 years of English and American legal history reveals a strong theme: government has the power to regulate arms in the public square,” Bybee wrote in a 7-4 decision for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.