The issue of gun rights as possessed by United States citizens revolves around the more specific issue of Second Amendment rights.
As interpreted by the American judicial branch, these Second Amendment rights, albeit termed in the specific and somewhat foreign context of being for the purpose of forming and maintaining militias, has been interpreted to provide gun rights to Americans in a wide variety of contexts, and to allow for gun rights both in the areas of firearms used for hunting purposes and those which are intended for use in self defense. The gun rights thus enjoyed by American citizens are thus typically termed as being the right to keep and bear arms.
The gun rights of Americans can also be legislated on according to the specific interests and decisions of the state or other area in which they live. In this regard, Second Amendment rights are not placed above other functions of the legal system of the United States, but are also not restricted to the purposes thought by some, though not all, interpreters to have been intended in the sense of the original Second Amendment rights which were accordingly enumerated for the document of the Constitution.
In the context of the judicial history of decisions which have some bearing on the gun rights of American citizens, as of 2010 the most recent Supreme Court rulings on gun rights came in the form of the cases of Columbia v. Heller, as was decided in 2008, and McDonald v. Chicago, as was decided in 2010.
