The Trace25%
New Jersey Just Lost Its Assault Weapons Ban. Here’s Why That Matters for the Rest of the Country. 26%
By Chip Brownlee24% Jennifer Mascia24%
7/21/2026, 9:55:20 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Negativity Bias, and Quote-first Misdirection, with Overconfidence Bias as the most egregious example at 14% saturation with 158 hits. Analysis detected 1,531 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,131 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 37.8% and a BS Rank of 26% (16,291 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 74.40% of the article peer group.
For the first time, a federal appellate court has struck down a state assault weapons ban on Second Amendment grounds.
On July 17, the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals struck down New Jersey’s ban.
Similar bans have been upheld by other appeals courts that have heard lawsuits challenging them, including in neighboring Maryland and most recently in Illinois, where the 4th and 7th Circuits upheld those states’ bans, respectively.
U.S.
Circuit Judge Arianna Freeman, an appointee of President Joe Biden, wrote the 3rd Circuit’s majority opinion, holding that the U.S.
Supreme Court’s precedent demanded the circuit court strike down the law.
The decision was 10-5.
“Together, Heller and Bruen 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,” she wrote.
“That is so even when the regulations are passed with the intention of reducing gun violence.”
The ruling against New Jersey’s assault weapons ban is likely only the first, and could mark the beginning of the end for similar laws in nearly a dozen states.
Delaware’s assault weapons ban — enacted in 2022 in response to back-to-back mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo — is likely next.
Delaware sits within the 3rd Circuit, and a district court judge hearing an unresolved challenge to the state’s ban will be bound by the appellate court’s decision.
The decision could also affect a ban in the U.S.
Virgin Islands, which is also within the 3rd Circuit.
The Supreme Court is likely to strike down the bans nationwide by next year.
Earlier this month, the court agreed to hear oral arguments in a case challenging bans in Cook County, Illinois, which is home to Chicago, and a statewide ban in Connecticut.
Oral arguments are expected later this year, with a ruling by June 2027.
Assault weapons bans have long been a central flashpoint in the U.S. gun debate.
In 1989, California enacted a ban on the guns after a school shooting.
In 1994, Connecticut and Cook County enacted their bans, and Congress enacted a nationwide ban.
That national ban lasted for a decade before it sunsetted in 2004 after a Republican Congress refused to reauthorize the law.
“Assault weapons ban” practically became a synonym for gun control after the Sandy Hook mass shooting in 2012 and what seemed to be a never-ending stream of devastating shootings committed with the weapons.
Calls for a renewed federal ban reached a peak when Democratic lawmakers, led by civil rights leader John Lewis, held a sit-in on the floor of Congress in 2016.
Throughout their terms, Presidents Barack Obama and Biden made impassioned calls for bans after mass shootings.
But today, with Republicans in control in Washington and courts increasingly wary, the issue is a nonstarter.
Even if Democrats retake either or both chambers in 2026, or the White House in 2028, the issue is likely to remain on the back burner.
Assault weapons bans haven’t even been adopted in every reliably blue state — only 11 states and Washington, D.C. have them.
It’s unclear whether rescinding the bans will cause an increase in gun violence — or mass shootings in particular.
Assault weapons have been used in most of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, and studies have found that assault weapons, combined with high-capacity magazines, may increase the death count in mass shootings.
Assault weapons are maneuverable and easy to use, and they fire rounds at a higher muzzle velocity than handgun rounds, causing catastrophic damage to the body.
Mass shootings are a comparatively rare phenomenon, amounting to about 1 percent of all shootings, 3 percent of deaths from shootings, and 6 percent of shooting injuries since 2014.
The Trace uses the Gun Violence Archive’s definition of mass shooting, which includes shootings resulting in four or more injuries or deaths, excluding the shooter.
Most shootings — including most mass shootings — are perpetrated with handguns.
Magazine capacity restrictions typically go hand-in-hand with assault weapons bans, both when lawmakers enact bans and when courts hear challenges.
The 3rd Circuit also struck down New Jersey’s ban on magazines that hold 10 or more rounds.
At least 13 other states and Washington, D.C. have similar restrictions.
A 2019 study found that large-capacity magazines resulted in a 60 percent higher average death toll in high-fatality mass shootings between 1990 and 2017.
Gun reform groups immediately criticized the New Jersey decision.
“If the people’s democratically elected representatives vote to do so, states absolutely have the right to decide to protect their residents from such deadly threats,” said Giffords executive director Emma Brown.
“With the Supreme Court poised to take up the constitutionality of assault weapons bans this year, we are preparing to fight for these commonsense laws.”
The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v.
Bruen was likely the death knell for assault weapons bans.
The decision laid out a new test for adjudicating Second Amendment cases, and said that any modern gun law that burdens gun rights needs to be similar to laws from early American history.
The framework effectively barred judges from considering the public safety intent or impact of a gun law by ending the means-end test courts had used before.
New Jersey argued that the features of assault weapons — a class of semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 and other similarly patterned weapons — are a legacy of their military heritage and designed for combat, making them unsuitable for lawful civilian purposes.
The state’s lawyers pointed to an American tradition of regulating “dangerous and unusual” weapons.
“The District Court found that these weapons are used for lawful purposes including self-defense, target shooting, hunting, and pest control, and that their build and design features, such as their mild recoil, ergonomics, and accuracy make them ‘a good choice for self-defense,’” Freeman wrote in the 3rd Circuit’s majority opinion.
Estimates suggest 24 million AR-15s and similarly patterned rifles are in circulation nationwide, the federal courts found.
Though most owners of AR-15-style rifles identify self-defense as their primary motivation for owning the weapons, a 2023 analysis by The Trace found that the guns are rarely used in self-defense shootings.
The forthcoming Supreme Court case, like the New Jersey case, will likely hinge on the phrases “in common use” and “dangerous and unusual.”
The court’s precedent holds that the Constitution protects weapons “in common use” for lawful purposes like self-defense, while allowing bans on “dangerous and unusual” weapons.
If the Supreme Court strikes down assault weapons bans nationwide next year, states could try other strategies, including putting semiautomatic rifles behind a permitting process.
Speakers
2speakers9.4%attributed speech1,025writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageEmma Brown
56 attributed words53% of attributed speech77% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.