The U.S. Supreme Court will extend gun rights to every state and city in the nation. The ruling is likely to spur new challenges, including community safety, to gun control measures across the United States.

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court extended gun rights to every state and city in the nation in a ruling involving Chicago's 28-year-old handgun ban.

The vote was 5-4, splitting along conservative and liberal lines.

For the first time, the Supreme Court extended its landmark 2008 ruling across the whole nation, giving each American a constitutional right to own guns.

The right to bear arms, under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, previously applied to just federal laws and enclaves, like Washington, D.C., where the court struck down a similar handgun ban in 2008.

Gun rights have been one of the country's most divisive social, political and legal issues. Some 90 million people in the United States own an estimated 200 million guns.

The United States is thought to have the world's highest civilian gun ownership rate.

Gun deaths average about 80 a day, with 34 of them homicides, according to U.S. government statistics.

The Supreme Court ruling was a victory for four Chicago-area residents, two gun rights groups and the politically powerful National Rifle Association.

It was a defeat for Chicago, which defended its law as a reasonable exercise of local power to protect public safety.

Chicago’s law and a similar handgun ban in suburban Oak Park, Illinois, were the nation's most restrictive gun control measures.