The Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it would decide whether state and local gun control laws may be challenged under the Second Amendment.

The court also agreed to hear nine other cases from among those that had piled up over its summer break, including one concerning the constitutionality of an antiterrorism law that is a favorite tool of federal prosecutors.

The Second Amendment case, McDonald v. Chicago, No. 08-1521, addresses a question that was left open last year when the court decided that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms rather than a collective right tied to state militias.

Last year's decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, concerned only federal laws and struck down parts of the gun control law in the District of Columbia, a federal enclave. The court ruled that the law violated the Second Amendment by barring law-abiding people from keeping guns in their homes for self-defense.

The new case was brought by residents of Chicago who say their city's handgun ban is identical to the one struck down in Heller.

Several Supreme Court decisions, all more than a century old, have said that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states.

In June, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, affirmed the dismissal of the new case, saying it was up to the Supreme Court to overrule its own precedents if it wished to do so. Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel of the appeals court, added that it was not certain whether and how the Supreme Court might apply the Second Amendment to the states.

