The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that New Jersey's decades-old bans on semiautomatic rifles classified as "assault firearms" and magazines holding more than 10 rounds violate the Second Amendment, the first time a federal appeals court has struck down a state assault weapons ban. The 10-5 decision dealt a direct blow to one of the Democratic Party's flagship gun-control measures and set the stage for a likely showdown at the Supreme Court.

New Jersey enacted its restrictions in 1990. For thirty-six years, the state barred residents from possessing AR-15-style rifles and standard-capacity magazines. On Friday, the appeals court said both provisions fail constitutional scrutiny.

The ruling lands at a moment when the Supreme Court has already agreed to review similar bans from Illinois and Connecticut in its next term. What the Third Circuit did Friday does not just affect New Jersey. It exposes the legal fragility of assault weapons bans in ten states and the District of Columbia, and hands Second Amendment advocates their strongest appellate victory yet.

What the court said

U.S. Circuit Judge Arianna Freeman, writing for the majority, grounded the decision in the Supreme Court's 2022 Bruen standard. That landmark ruling requires modern firearms restrictions to align with the nation's historical tradition of gun regulation. The New York Post reported Freeman wrote 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."

The ruling applied to the entire class of banned semiautomatic rifles, not just Colt-branded AR-15s. It also struck down the magazine-capacity restriction. Five judges dissented.

The decision reversed part of a July 2024 lower-court ruling in which a federal judge found New Jersey's AR-15 ban unconstitutional but upheld the magazine restriction. The Third Circuit went further, wiping out both provisions.

A first among federal appeals courts

No federal appeals court had ever struck down a state assault weapons ban before Friday. That distinction matters because the circuit courts set binding precedent for the federal trial courts beneath them. The Third Circuit covers New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The timing sharpens the contrast. Just last week, a different federal appeals court upheld Illinois' ban on semiautomatic weapons. The two rulings now point in opposite directions, a circuit split that all but guarantees the Supreme Court will have the final word. The high court, with its already heavy docket, has signaled it is ready to take up the question.

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, a Democrat, called the ruling "as unfortunate as it is legally incorrect." She pointed to the other circuits as evidence her state was on solid ground:

"Every other federal circuit court to consider the issue has come out the other way. 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. We are considering our options."

Her office did not specify whether those options include seeking en banc rehearing or petitioning the Supreme Court directly.

Second Amendment groups claim a landmark win

The National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action wasted no time framing the decision as a turning point. NRA-ILA Executive Director John Commerford, as Just The News reported, issued a lengthy statement:

"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 Second Amendment Foundation also weighed in. SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said the ruling "confirms arguments in SAF's two cases before the Supreme Court are valid and well-reasoned." The Firearms Policy Coalition similarly praised the decision, stating that "the Third Circuit concluded that New Jersey's prohibition on semi-automatic rifles violates the Second Amendment."

For these organizations, the ruling is more than a single-state victory. It strengthens the legal position they will carry into the Supreme Court's upcoming review of similar bans.

The Bruen standard keeps reshaping gun law

The 2022 Bruen decision fundamentally changed how courts evaluate firearms regulations. Before Bruen, courts applied a two-step framework that often deferred to legislative judgment. The Supreme Court replaced that approach with a historical-tradition test: a modern gun law survives only if the government can show it is "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."

That standard has proved difficult for states to meet. The Washington Examiner noted that the Trump Department of Justice has filed Second Amendment lawsuits against multiple blue states, including Virginia, as part of a broader effort to dismantle state-level gun restrictions. The Third Circuit's ruling adds judicial weight to that campaign.

UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, who has written extensively on gun law, called Friday's ruling surprising, in part because federal appeals courts had consistently upheld assault weapons bans before now. His assessment of the decision's reach was blunt: "What this Third Circuit opinion shows is that there are very few gun laws that are safe from being struck down right now."

Winkler added that the decision "may be foretelling the Supreme Court's coming opinion on assault weapons bans." If that prediction holds, the legal landscape for gun-control advocates will narrow dramatically. The high court's 6-3 conservative majority has shown little appetite for the kind of deference that sustained these bans for decades.

The stakes beyond New Jersey

Ten states and the District of Columbia currently ban the manufacture, sale, and transfer of assault weapons, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The District of Columbia, New Jersey, and eleven other states cap magazine capacity at 10 rounds generally or for certain types of firearms. Friday's ruling does not automatically void those laws, it binds only the states within the Third Circuit, but it provides a roadmap for challengers everywhere.

The Breitbart report on the ruling emphasized that the decision applied the Bruen two-tiered test examining the historicity and tradition of firearms regulation in America. Courts in other circuits will now face pressure to explain why they reached a different conclusion using the same framework.

That pressure matters because the Supreme Court thrives on circuit splits. When two or more appeals courts disagree on the same constitutional question, the justices almost always step in. The split between the Third Circuit and the court that upheld Illinois' ban last week makes Supreme Court review all but certain.

The broader judicial environment has shifted, too. Conservative legal organizations have grown more aggressive in pressing courts and lawmakers to enforce constitutional limits on government power, and firearms cases have become a central front in that effort.

Democrats face a narrowing legal path

For decades, Democratic leaders treated assault weapons bans as settled policy, politically popular in blue states and legally safe after repeated appellate victories. Friday's ruling shatters that assumption.

Attorney General Davenport's statement acknowledged the problem implicitly. She noted that "every other federal circuit court to consider the issue has come out the other way." That was true, until now. One break in the wall was all it took to create the circuit split that could bring the entire structure down at the Supreme Court.

The political dynamics are just as unfavorable for gun-control proponents. The Trump administration has signaled through DOJ filings that it views state-level assault weapons bans as constitutionally suspect. A Supreme Court ruling striking down such bans would remove the issue from state legislative discretion entirely. No amount of legislative maneuvering in Congress could override a constitutional holding.

New Jersey's law survived for thirty-six years. It took one Supreme Court decision in 2022 to set the clock ticking, and four years for an appeals court to pull the trigger. The speed of the legal shift has caught many Democratic officials flat-footed.

What comes next

Several questions remain unanswered. The Third Circuit's opinion does not appear to have been accompanied by an immediate injunction, and it is unclear whether New Jersey will pause enforcement while it weighs its next move. Davenport said only that the state is "considering our options", language that typically signals either a petition for en banc rehearing by the full circuit or a direct appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court's decision to take up the Illinois and Connecticut cases suggests the justices are ready to resolve the question nationally. If they apply the same Bruen framework the Third Circuit used, and there is no reason to think they won't, assault weapons bans in every state could face the same fate as New Jersey's.

The current Supreme Court term has already produced sharp ideological divisions among the justices. A ruling on assault weapons bans would add another major Second Amendment decision to a body of law that has expanded gun rights significantly since 2008.

For law-abiding gun owners in New Jersey and across the country, Friday's ruling affirmed what they have long argued: that commonly owned rifles and standard-capacity magazines fall within the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. For the officials who spent decades telling those citizens their rights could be legislated away, the Third Circuit had a different message.

The Constitution is not optional, even in Trenton.