The Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. City of Chicago that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments, a landmark decision that struck down the city's nearly complete ban on handgun ownership.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion in the 5-4 decision, holding that the right to bear arms is fundamental to the nation's scheme of ordered liberty and therefore binding on the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling extended protections first established in District of Columbia v. Heller two years earlier, which had invalidated a federal gun ban in Washington, D.C.
Chicago had maintained one of the nation's strictest handgun restrictions since 1982, effectively prohibiting residents from possessing operational handguns in their homes. The city argued its ban served compelling public safety interests in a city struggling with gun violence. The Court rejected this reasoning, finding that the Second Amendment's protections could not be wholly eliminated at the state level.
Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, warning the decision would hamper states' ability to regulate firearms in response to local crime patterns. The dissenters argued the majority had created an absolute constitutional right where the framers intended flexibility for democratic determination.
The decision represented a major conservative victory on gun rights, effectively nationalizing Second Amendment protections that previously applied only to federal law. It ended decades of legal consensus that the Second Amendment posed no barrier to state and local gun regulations. Chicago and other cities with strict handgun bans faced immediate legal challenges to their ordinances following the ruling.
The 5-4 split reflected the Court's ideological divide during the Roberts Court era, with conservative justices prioritizing individual gun ownership rights against governmental restrictions, while liberal justices deferred to elected officials' crime prevention authority.