# McDonald v. Chicago The decision that made the individual right to bear arms binding on every state and city. Decided June 28, 2010 by a 5–4 vote, *McDonald v. Chicago* held that the [[Second Amendment]] right recognized two years earlier in [[District of Columbia v. Heller]] is incorporated against the states through the [[Fourteenth Amendment]] — meaning state and local gun laws, not just federal ones, must respect it. The immediate effect was to strike down Chicago's handgun ban. ## The Holding Justice [[Samuel Alito]]'s plurality opinion incorporated the right via the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause — the standard "selective incorporation" route used for most of the [[Bill of Rights]]. Justice [[Clarence Thomas]] concurred in the judgment but argued the right should be incorporated through the Privileges or Immunities Clause instead, a long-dormant provision he has repeatedly sought to revive. The four dissenters warned the decision would constitutionalize a vast field of gun regulation previously left to states and localities. ## Significance *McDonald* is the middle link in the Second Amendment sequence the vault tracks: [[District of Columbia v. Heller]] (2008, individual right established) → *McDonald* (2010, right incorporated against the states) → [[NYSRPA v. Bruen]] (2022, history-and-tradition test). Without *McDonald*, *Bruen*'s sweeping limits on state gun regulation would have had no purchase. It nationalized the constitutional gun right and set the stage for the post-*Bruen* cascade of challenges to state firearms laws. ## See Also - [[District of Columbia v. Heller]] — The right *McDonald* nationalized - [[NYSRPA v. Bruen]] — The test that followed, applied to state laws via *McDonald*