New Jersey can no longer enforce its ban on AR-15-style rifles or the standard-capacity magazines that ship with them, after a federal appeals court ruled the restrictions violate the Second Amendment. The Reload first reported the decision, which marks the first time a federal appeals court has struck down a state’s “assault weapon” ban or large-capacity magazine restriction.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, sitting en banc, issued a 10-5 ruling on Friday in ANJRPC v. Attorney General of New Jersey, throwing out the state’s prohibitions on semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 and on magazines holding more than ten rounds. Writing for the majority in the 192-page opinion, Judge Arianna Freeman concluded that these firearms and magazines are owned by millions of Americans for lawful purposes and therefore fall outside the reach of a categorical ban.

“We therefore hold that New Jersey’s complete prohibition on the possession of semi-automatic rifles runs afoul of the Second Amendment’s protections,” Freeman wrote, adding that the same reasoning doomed the state’s magazine restrictions.

Why This Case Matters Beyond New Jersey

The ruling creates a split among federal circuits on the constitutionality of assault weapon bans, since other appellate courts have upheld similar laws in other states. That disagreement lands at a pivotal moment: the U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to take up its own challenges to assault weapon bans in Illinois and Connecticut, meaning the justices are now positioned to settle the question nationally within the next year.

How the Case Got Here

The lawsuit began as three separate challenges that a federal district judge, Peter Sheridan, combined and ruled on in 2024. Sheridan’s decision split the difference: he struck down New Jersey’s ban only as it applied to one specific rifle, the Colt AR-15, while leaving the broader assault weapon law and the magazine ban intact.

A three-judge panel of the Third Circuit was scheduled to review that ruling last summer, but the full court intervened first, opting to take up the case en banc rather than let a smaller panel decide it. Friday’s opinion rejected Sheridan’s narrow, single-model approach outright, with the majority explaining that the evidentiary record supported a ruling covering all semi-automatic rifles similar to the AR-15, not just one manufacturer’s version.

The Legal Reasoning

Applying the framework set out in the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, the majority first addressed whether AR-15s even count as “arms” protected by the Second Amendment. Some judges on other courts, including members of the dissent in this case, have argued they don’t. The majority disagreed, noting that even the narrowest historical definitions of “arms” from the founding era covered all firearms.

From there, the court reasoned that a weapon in common, lawful use by the public cannot be banned outright unless the government can point to a comparable historical tradition of restricting it, something New Jersey couldn’t produce. As Freeman put it, that principle “resolves our inquiry here,” regardless of the state’s public-safety rationale for the law.

Reaction Split Along Predictable Lines

The Firearms Policy Coalition, one of the groups behind the litigation, celebrated the ruling. FPC President Brandon Combs said the court “correctly recognized what was obvious all along: the government cannot ban an entire class of commonly owned firearms, full stop.”

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport pushed back hard, calling the decision “as unfortunate as it is legally incorrect” and saying her office is “considering our options” — language that typically signals a possible appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Dissent

Judge Patty Shwartz, an Obama appointee, wrote the primary dissent on behalf of four judges. She argued the majority should have limited its ruling to the Colt AR-15 rather than sweeping in all similar rifles, and she disputed the underlying premise that AR-15s and high-capacity magazines qualify as protected “arms” at all. In her view, their features make them disproportionate to ordinary self-defense needs, placing them outside the Second Amendment’s scope entirely.

The majority wasn’t persuaded. The case now returns to the lower court, which must issue a new order consistent with the Third Circuit’s ruling striking down both the rifle ban and the magazine restrictions.

Reporting on the underlying case details and court filings via The Reload.