The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has done what no federal appellate court has done before: declared a state ban on semiautomatic rifles unconstitutional. In a sweeping en banc decision issued Friday, the Philadelphia-based court struck down New Jersey's decades-old "assault-firearms" ban and its restrictions on magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds, ruling both violate the Second Amendment.
The decision is the first of its kind from any federal appeals court in the country. And it lands at a moment when the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to take up the very same question, whether state bans on semiautomatic rifles pass constitutional muster.
For gun owners in New Jersey and across the nation, the ruling represents a vindication years in the making. For the political class that has spent decades treating the Second Amendment as a suggestion, it is a legal reckoning that has been building since the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
The court didn't just strike down New Jersey's ban on the AR-15. It went further, declaring the state's prohibition unconstitutional as applied to the entire class of semiautomatic rifles covered by the law. It also reversed a lower court decision that had upheld New Jersey's ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds.
Fox News Digital reported that the majority, written by U.S. Circuit Judge Arianna Freeman, a Biden appointee, concluded that New Jersey failed to demonstrate its restrictions are consistent with America's historical tradition of firearm regulation. That standard comes directly from the Supreme Court's framework in District of Columbia v. Heller and Bruen, which requires governments to justify modern gun laws by pointing to analogous historical restrictions.
New Jersey couldn't do it.
The Washington Examiner reported the ruling was 10-5, with the majority applying the Bruen standard that modern gun restrictions must align with "this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." The dissenting judges argued that the banned firearms are unusually dangerous military-style weapons and that states have long held authority to regulate them. Dissenters also contended the decision conflicts with every other federal appeals court to have considered similar state restrictions.
The National Rifle Association has litigated this case since 2018. Justin Davis, the NRA's managing director of public affairs, told Fox News Digital the outcome was worth the fight.
"This is an NRA case that we've been litigating since 2018, so it's a monumental win."
The NRA's formal statement left no ambiguity about the organization's view of the ruling's significance:
"The Third Circuit has struck down these unconstitutional so-called assault weapons bans and magazine bans in New Jersey, affirming what we've always known: the right to keep and bear arms, including commonly-owned rifles and standard-capacity magazines, is fundamental and cannot be infringed by politicians who prioritize control over constitutional freedoms."
The organization also called the decision "a historic victory for the NRA, the Second Amendment, and law-abiding Americans" and said it "protects the rights of millions of responsible gun owners in the Garden State."
New Jersey enacted its "assault-firearms law" in 1990, following a California elementary school shooting. At the time, the state's governor described the banned firearms as "guns capable of wholesale destruction" that were "designed to wipe out the greatest number of people in the shortest possible time."
That kind of rhetoric has fueled gun-control politics for more than three decades. But rhetoric is not constitutional analysis. The Third Circuit's majority found that New Jersey's emotional justification could not substitute for the historical evidence the Bruen framework demands. The state had to show that its ban fit within a long tradition of comparable restrictions. It could not.
This is the core tension the ruling exposes. Politicians in blue states have long treated semiautomatic rifles as uniquely dangerous weapons that fall outside constitutional protection. The Third Circuit said otherwise, and it did so using the Supreme Court's own test.
The decision carries weight far beyond New Jersey's borders. AP News reported that 10 states plus Washington, D.C., currently have laws banning assault weapons, and 11 states plus D.C. cap magazine capacity at 10 rounds. Until now, every federal circuit court to consider these bans had upheld them.
The Third Circuit just broke that consensus.
Newsmax noted that a different federal appeals court upheld Illinois' similar ban just the week before the New Jersey ruling came down. That kind of circuit split, where two federal appeals courts reach opposite conclusions on the same constitutional question, all but guarantees the Supreme Court will have to resolve the matter.
New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport acknowledged the ruling's outlier status. "Every other federal circuit court to consider the issue has come out the other way," she said.
That's true. But the Third Circuit's majority was not persuaded by the fact that other courts got it wrong first.
Gun-rights organizations beyond the NRA moved quickly to connect the ruling to their own pending cases. Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said the decision "confirms arguments in SAF's two cases before the Supreme Court, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, are valid and well-reasoned." The Firearms Policy Coalition stated plainly that the Third Circuit concluded New Jersey's prohibition on semiautomatic rifles violates the Second Amendment.
The Washington Examiner reported that the Department of Justice has also sued Virginia over its assault weapons law, adding federal enforcement pressure to the legal challenges already moving through the courts. The Supreme Court is set to hear challenges to similar bans in Illinois and Connecticut in its upcoming term.
UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, not a figure typically aligned with gun-rights advocacy, offered a frank assessment to AP News: "What this Third Circuit opinion shows is that there are very few gun laws that are safe from being struck down right now."
One detail worth pausing on: Judge Arianna Freeman, who wrote the majority opinion, is a Biden appointee. That fact undercuts the reflexive progressive narrative that these rulings are the product of partisan judicial activism. Freeman applied the legal standard the Supreme Court established in Bruen and followed where the analysis led. New Jersey's law did not survive the test.
The dissenting judges raised familiar objections, that the banned weapons are military-style firearms, that states have historically regulated dangerous arms, and that the majority's conclusion puts the Third Circuit at odds with every other circuit. Those arguments may find a more receptive audience in Trenton or on cable news panels. They did not carry the day in the courtroom.
The ruling's immediate practical effect remains an open question. It is unclear whether the decision takes effect immediately or whether New Jersey will seek a stay pending appeal. What is clear is that the state will almost certainly ask the Supreme Court to intervene, and the high court, which already has semiautomatic rifle cases on its docket, may be ready to answer.
For now, the Third Circuit has said plainly what the Second Amendment's text has always said: the right to keep and bear arms extends to commonly owned firearms, including semiautomatic rifles and standard-capacity magazines. New Jersey's three-decade experiment in pretending otherwise has run into the Constitution.
When even a Biden-appointed judge writes the opinion telling a blue state its gun ban fails the constitutional test, the message is hard to miss. The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, no matter how many state legislatures wish it were.
