By Nate Raymond
July 17 (Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Friday 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.
Friday’s ruling 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.”
Democratic-led New Jersey’s lawyers had argued that it, like 10 other 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.
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.
She was among two appointees of Democratic President Joe Biden in the majority, which otherwise was comprised of Republican-appointed judges.
Among the groups challenging the ban was the Firearms Policy Coalition. Its president, Brandon Combs, in a statement called the ruling “another devastating blow to the authoritarian war on gun owners.”
U.S. Circuit Judge Patty Shwartz, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, in a dissenting opinion said states were entitled to ban certain weapons, including “dangerous and unusual” ones like semi-automatic rifles “that gunmen have continued to use to commit crimes and mass shootings.”
New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport in a statement said her office was considering its options to address the “unfortunate” decision.
“Assault weapons and large capacity magazines play a dangerous role in the modern epidemic of mass shootings, and New Jersey acted reasonably and lawfully in restricting them,” she said.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by David Gregorio)
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