US appeals court strikes down New Jersey’s assault weapons ban on AR-15s

A federal appeals court on July 17 ruled that New Jersey‘s assault-weapons law barring possession of semiautomatic rifles like AR-15s and large capacity magazines containing more than 10 rounds of ammunition is unconstitutional.

The ruling by the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals marked the first time a federal appeals court had ruled that a state’s assault weapons ban violated the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.

That issue is already in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed last month to review rulings that had upheld similar bans adopted in Cook County, Illinois, and Connecticut against powerful semiautomatic rifles. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority.

The ruling on July 17 came in lawsuits filed by gun rights groups that said New Jersey’s law could no longer stand after the Supreme Court handed down a landmark Second Amendment ruling in 2022 that expanded gun rights.

That decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, held that modern gun restrictions must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Lawyers for Democratic-led New Jersey had argued that the state, like 10 other U.S. states, was justified in banning assault weapons, which they characterized as military-style weapons that can cause “wholesale destruction” and fuel mass shootings.

A lower-court judge in 2024 delivered a mixed ruling, holding New Jersey’s 1990 ban on AR-15 rifles was unconstitutional but that its prohibition of large-capacity ammunition magazines could stand.

The appeals court by a 10-5 vote went even further, declaring the ban on all types of semi-automatic rifles, and not just AR-15s, violates the Second Amendment, as does the large-capacity magazine ban.

The court also directed a lower-court judge to assess the constitutionality of the assault weapons ban as applied to other types of firearms, such as semi-automatic pistols and shotguns.

U.S. Circuit Judge Arianna Freeman said the Supreme Court’s recent Second Amendment rulings “teach that bans or broad prohibitions on possessing or carrying of a class of weapons in common use for lawful purposes fail to find support in our Nation’s tradition of firearm regulation.”

“That is so even when the regulations are passed with the intention of reducing gun violence,” Freeman wrote for the court.