Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case called McDonald v. Chicago, which will most likely have an impact on you and your rights. Although the case focuses on the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, it appears to me to be much broader than that. It seems to me that the entire Bill of Rights may be at stake.

As you probably recall from your school days, the Bill of Rights is the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. They might sound familiar: the First Amendment guarantees us freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the right to peaceably assemble and petition our government. The Second Amendment gives the right to keep and bear arms; the Fourth Amendment protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government; while the Fifth Amendment guarantees us due process of law. That’s pretty important stuff.

How important? You decide.

In 1769, the famous jurist William Blackstone wrote in his “Commentaries on The Laws of England” that Catholics who were convicted of not attending the Church of England suffered certain penalties. Can you imagine that? You could be a criminal by belonging to the wrong church. Not good.

The Bill of Rights guarantees us that such things cannot happen here in the United States. Sure, different states have different preferences and traditions, but as Americans, we have basic rights that no one can take away. In Boston, many people are Irish Catholic, in Memphis there are a lot of Baptists, and in Skokie the majority may be Jewish, but as Americans, the Bill of Rights gives us the choice to belong to any church we wish. Until now.

To understand what is at stake here, a little background is in order. The city of Washington, D.C., had a legal ban on handgun ownership passed by its residents. Dick Heller was a special police officer in D.C. assigned to the Federal Judicial Center and carried a handgun in D.C. every day as part of his job. Heller decided he wanted to keep a handgun at his D.C. home for protection and applied for a permit to do so. He was denied the right to have a gun and filed suit, alleging that his constitutional rights were being violated.

Eventually, the case of Heller v. District of Columbia worked its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in June of 2008 the Supreme Court issued its ruling. The court declared that the Second Amendment does indeed protect Heller’s right as an individual to keep and bear arms and struck down the District of Columbia gun ban.

Gun owners all over America celebrated this victory for the common citizen. There are similar gun bans in New York, San Francisco and Chicago that many gun owners expected would be overturned.

But wait! The city of Chicago doesn’t see it that way. Can you believe that? Just last week, Chicago’s lawyers argued that the Heller decision and the Bill of Rights don’t apply in Chicago. Otis McDonald, a retired maintenance engineer and U.S. Army veteran, applied for a gun permit in Chicago and was denied. Like Heller, McDonald filed suit to exercise his constitutional right to protect himself.

Now it’s in the hands of the Supreme Court. A decision is expected in the next few months. Hopefully, the court will decide that the Bill of Rights does indeed apply in Chicago, as well as San Francisco and New York. If not, will we soon have to worry about getting busted for belonging to the wrong church?

• Editor’s note: In the case of Heller v. District of Columbia, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the federal government cannot infringe upon an individual’s right to bear arms but did not apply the precedent to whether gun laws in states, cities or other municipalities are valid under the Second Amendment.

• Don Moyer is longtime outdoors enthusiast. To reach him about this column, e-mail don.moyer@gmail.com.