Both gun rights advocates and state officials said they will appeal a federal judge's split ruling on 'assault firearms' and ammunition. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A federal judge has struck down New Jersey’s ban on Colt AR-15 rifles but upheld its prohibition of large-capacity ammunition magazines, a split ruling that both gun fans and foes vowed to appeal.
In a Tuesday decision, U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan sided with New Jersey gun owners who challenged a 1990 state law banning “assault firearms.” That law bans more than 60 semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, but Sheridan said he limited his ruling to Colt AR-15 rifles because that was the gun “with which the Court has been provided the most information” in briefs and arguments.
Sheridan said a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as Bruen makes any categorical ban on weapons that are commonly used for self-defense unconstitutional. Bruen upended gun restrictions across the country when the court’s conservative majority declared a constitutional right to guns.
The judge was clearly reluctant to allow gun owners to possess Colt AR-15s, though, citing the toll of mass shootings — many of which were carried out by people armed with AR-style rifles and similar weapons.
“It is hard to accept the Supreme Court’s pronouncements that certain firearms policy choices are ‘off the table’ when frequently, radical individuals possess and use these same firearms for evil purposes,” Sheridan wrote.
His decision was dictated by a legal principle known as stare decisis, he added.
“That is, where the Supreme Court has set forth the law of our Nation, as a lower court, I am bound to follow it,” Sheridan wrote. “This principle — combined with the reckless inaction of our governmental leaders to address the mass shooting tragedy afflicting our Nation — necessitates the Court’s decision.”
The case’s plaintiffs — two gun groups and several gun owners — also sought to overturn the state’s ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds.
But Sheridan sided with New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, state police Superintendent Patrick Callahan, and several local police chiefs and prosecutors on that issue, saying there is no historical precedent for the lethality of modern guns with large-capacity magazines.
“Even where there may have been mass events of murder in the Founding Era or Reconstruction Era, these instances pale in comparison to the accurate brutality exacted today by mass shooters,” Sheridan wrote. “The relevant large capacity magazines simply did not exist during Founding or Reconstruction Eras.”
Most high-fatality mass shootings in recent years involved the use of large-capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds, the judge added. New Jersey’s restriction on large-capacity magazines provides “a solution to this very real problem,” he wrote.
“The lethality exerted upon the victims of a shooter armed with a magazine that can continue to shoot in a line of uninterrupted fire for a longer time period is lessened where that line of uninterrupted fire is reduced. A limitation on magazine capacity stops the rate at which victims can be injured. A limitation on magazine capacity allows for time during which a shooter may be intercepted, interrupted, or hopefully, stopped,” Sheridan wrote.
The Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, one of the plaintiffs in the case, issued a statement calling the decision an “unusual ruling.”
“While the decision is groundbreaking in that it invalidates parts of New Jersey’s assault firearms law, it mistakenly limits that ruling to the ‘Colt AR-15’ only, even though the lawsuit clearly challenges the law as to ALL assault firearms,” the statement reads. “Also, the ruling curiously upholds New Jersey’s magazine ban while simultaneously invalidating parts of the assault firearm law.”
Another plaintiff, the Firearms Policy Coalition, already filed a notice of appeal to the Third Circuit.
“Bans on so-called ‘assault weapons’ are immoral and unconstitutional,” the group’s president Brandon Combs said in a prepared statement.
Attorney General Matt Platkin said he was “disappointed” by the ruling.
“Today’s decision weaponizes the Second Amendment to undermine public safety,” Platkin said in a statement. “The AR-15 is an instrument designed for warfare that inflicts catastrophic mass injuries, and is the weapon of choice for the epidemic of mass shootings that have ravaged so many communities across this nation.”
Still, Platkin noted, “the overwhelming majority of our law remains intact today: the district court thankfully upheld our restriction on large-capacity magazines, and did not allow individuals to possess any other prohibited assault weapons.”
Platkin said the state will appeal on the AR-15 issue.
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