With its December 11 ruling striking down a Chicago law forbidding individuals from carrying guns in public, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit delivered the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) a major victory—and handed the group’s lawyer, Virginia litigator Alan Gura, yet another big win.

For Gura, a one-time Sidley Austin associate who is now the co-owner of Gura and Possessky, the Second Circuit ruling followed earlier triumphs in a pair of landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases: District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 and McDonald v. Chicago in 2010. By persuading the Supreme Court to uphold the rights of individuals to own firearms in Heller and McDonald—cases that found the Court weighing the scope of the Second Amendment for the first time in nearly 70 years—Gura burnished his reputation as the gun rights movement’s go-to advocate.