The Supreme Court made its first major pronouncement on gun control in U.S. history on Thursday. The court ruled that Americans have a constitutional right to keep guns in their homes for the purpose of self-defense.

The 5-4 ruling ends a 32-year-old District of Columbia ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment.

Since the ratification of the Second Amendment in 1791, the court had not conclusively rendered an interpretation. The amendment reads as follows: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The issue in question for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to posess guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote on behalf of the majority, and stated that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

Washington's requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, was also struck down by the court's ruling. Scalia explained that the constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home."

According to Scalia, the handgun is America's preferred weapon of self-defense in part because "it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police." No mention of cost and size was made by the justice.

Self-defense in the home underlined much of Scalia's opinion. Throughout his historical analysis Scalia briefly acknowledged that early Americans also valued gun rights, as it contributed to the protection of hunting rights. Of course the Washington law at issue only affected heavily populated areas, not hunting grounds.

In a dissent Justice John Paul Stevens summarized from the bench, he wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons." Such evidence, he continued, "is nowhere to be found."

A separate dissent written by Justice Stephen Breyer states, "In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas."

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas sided with Scalia. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter made up the rest of the dissenters.

Based on Thursday's outcome, the NRA will file lawsuits in San Francisco, Chicago and several of its suburbs to challenge handgun restrictions.

"I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it," was the response issued by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a leading gun control advocate in Congress.

The D.C. gun law was among the nation's strictest.

Challenging this law was 66-year-old Dick Anthony Heller, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his Capitol Hill home. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Heller's favor and struck down Washington's handgun ban. The Appeals Court ruling was based on the notion that the Constitution protects the right of Americans to own guns, and that a total prohibition specifically on handguns is not compatible with that right.

Within the Bush administration there was a split on the issue with Vice President Dick Cheney supporting the appeals court ruling, while other administration members expressed concern over the possible undoing of other gun regulations.

The president embraced the court's decision, said White House press secretary Dana Perino. "This has been the administration's long-held view," Perino said. "The president is also pleased that the court concluded that the D.C. firearm laws violate that right."

The laws that reserved the concerns of administration members were a federal law restricting machine gun sales, laws to prohibit felons from buying guns and laws that allow for an instant background check.

Nothing in Thursday's ruling should "cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings," said Scalia.

Scalia concluded in his 64-page opinion, that the justices in the majority "are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country" and believe the Constitution "leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns."

Washington's city council adopted the law in 1976 which bars residents from owning handguns unless it had been purchased prior to the enactment of the law. Under the law, shotguns and rifles were permitted to be kept in homes, so long as they were registered, kept unloaded and either disassembled or equipped with trigger locks.

Opponents of the law have argued that it prevents residents from defending themselves, however the Washington government said that no one would be prosecuted for a violation in cases of self-defense.

U.S. v. Miller, a case which involved a sawed-off shotgun, was the last Supreme Court ruling on the topic of individual gun ownership. Constitutional scholars disagree over what that 1939 case meant but agree it did not completely answer the question of individual versus collective rights.

Forty-four state constitutions contain gun rights legislation, which remain unaffected by the court's ruling.