Writing for the Court, Justice Samuel Alito held that the Second Amendment is fully applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Alito noted that in Heller, the Court established that the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense is “the central component” of the Second Amendment and is engrained into out Nation’s history and tradition. He wrote that at the time of our founding, “Antifederalists and Federalists alike agreed that the right to bear arms was fundamental to the newly formed system of government. . .[b]ut those who were fearful that the new Federal Government would infringe traditional rights such as the right to keep and bear arms insisted on the adoption of the Bill of Rights as a condition for ratification of the Constitution.”

In applying the Second Amendment to the states, Alito wrote that “if a Bill of Rights guarantee is fundamental from an American perspective, then, unless stare decisis counsels otherwise that guarantee is fully binding on the States and thus limits (but by no means eliminates) their ability to devise solutions to social problems that suit local needs and values.” Alito determined that the Second Amendment is “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty and justice” and is thus incorporated against the states under the Due Process Clause. Alito commented on overturning Cruikshank (1876), Presser (1886), and Miller (1894), noting that they “all preceded the era in which the Court began the process of ‘selective incorporation’ under the Due Process Clause” and that Cruikshank was already overturned in part in De Jonge v. Oregon (1937). Alito concluded with a comment on other gun regulations, noting that “[d]espite municipal respondents’ doomsday proclamations, incorporation does not imperil every law regulating firearms.”