July 20, 2026
Gun Talk Staff
For years, the Second Amendment community has been winning in the Supreme Court and losing in the lower federal courts. Heller in 2008. McDonald in 2010. Bruen in 2022. Three landmark Supreme Court wins, each establishing clearer and more protective constitutional standards. And in the circuit courts below? Assault weapons bans upheld, magazine limits upheld, restrictions upon restrictions affirmed by appellate panels that found ways — sometimes creative ways — to distinguish the Supreme Court’s rulings from the specific laws being challenged.
That consistency broke Friday afternoon.
The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc with all its active judges voting, struck down New Jersey’s ban on semi-automatic rifles and the state’s 10-round magazine limit. Both, the court held, violate the Second Amendment. The vote was 10 to 5. The author of the majority opinion was Circuit Judge Arianna Julia Freeman, appointed to the bench in 2022 by President Biden. The full opinion package — majority, concurrences, and dissents — runs approximately 192 pages.
Let that sink in for a second. A Biden-appointed federal judge, writing for a 10-judge majority, just told New Jersey that its assault weapons ban is unconstitutional. That is not a sentence that would have seemed plausible two years ago. It is the sentence that defines the Second Amendment legal landscape heading into this fall’s Supreme Court term.
“No longer can any Court of Appeals say that every other circuit has upheld assault weapons bans. The Third Circuit just became the first to strike one down. That changes the conversation permanently.” — Shooting News Weekly, July 18, 2026
The ruling has two major components, and both matter.
The court applied the Bruen framework — the text-and-history test the Supreme Court established in 2022 requiring that firearms regulations be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition at the time of the founding — and found that New Jersey’s ban on semi-automatic rifles fails that test. The majority agreed with the lower court that New Jersey’s ban on Colt AR-15s specifically is unconstitutional, then went further: it modified the lower court’s order to reach all semi-automatic rifles, not just the AR-15. The entire class of banned semi-automatic firearms goes down.
The court’s reasoning on the ‘common use’ question was direct. The lower court had found approximately 24 million AR-15-style rifles in civilian circulation. New Jersey offered no data to rebut that figure. The majority held that semi-automatic rifles are in common use for lawful purposes — self-defense, hunting, target shooting, pest control — and therefore fall squarely within the Second Amendment’s protection under Heller’s common-use standard. New Jersey’s argument that these rifles’ features trace to military heritage and make them combat weapons didn’t move the majority. The record, the court said, tells a different story.
This is the part that goes further than most observers expected. The lower court had upheld New Jersey’s 10-round magazine restriction even while striking the AR-15 ban. The Third Circuit reversed that and struck the magazine limit too.
Judge Freeman’s majority opinion included language on magazines that is going to be quoted in every assault weapons ban case going forward: “Because magazines are required to operate many firearms, they are ‘Arms’ within the text of the Second Amendment — even when they can hold more than ten rounds of ammunition. Thus, magazines — including those that can hold more than ten rounds — are presumptively entitled to constitutional protection.”
That is a sweeping statement about magazine rights. The court did not say 30-round magazines are categorically protected forever under all circumstances. What it said is that magazines are “arms” under the Second Amendment, that they are presumptively protected, and that a state trying to restrict them bears the burden of demonstrating historical justification for that restriction. New Jersey failed to carry that burden. The magazine limit falls.
“Because magazines are required to operate many firearms, they are ‘Arms’ within the text of the Second Amendment — even when they can hold more than ten rounds of ammunition.” — Judge Arianna Freeman, Third Circuit majority opinion, ANJRPC v. Platkin
Here is why Friday’s ruling is bigger than just New Jersey. Until July 17, every federal circuit court that had decided an assault weapons ban case had upheld it. The Second Circuit upheld Connecticut’s ban. The Fourth Circuit upheld Maryland’s ban. The Seventh Circuit upheld Illinois’s ban — and did so just eight days before the Third Circuit came out the other way. Courts of appeals disagreeing with each other is exactly the condition that makes Supreme Court review not just appropriate but essentially mandatory.
We already knew the Supreme Court was going to rule on assault weapons bans. The cert grant in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins on June 30 — which we covered in depth — had already put the question on SCOTUS’s docket for the fall term. What Friday’s Third Circuit ruling does is make that question more urgent, more concrete, and more visible. There is now a federal circuit court that has struck down an assault weapons ban. There is a circuit court that upheld one eight days earlier. The Supreme Court will have to resolve that conflict.
On July 9, 2026, the Seventh Circuit decided Barnett v. Raoul and upheld Illinois’ Protect Illinois Communities Act — the state’s assault weapons ban — in a 2-1 decision. The majority opinion was written by Judge Amy St. Eve, joined by Judge Frank Easterbrook. Chief Judge Michael Brennan dissented, noting that the AR-15 is the best-selling rifle in America and that the banned magazines are standard capacity for the weapons they feed.
So within nine days, the Seventh Circuit said Illinois can ban AR-15s, and the Third Circuit said New Jersey cannot ban semi-automatic rifles. Two federal appeals courts. Nearly identical legal questions. Opposite answers. The Supreme Court does not have the luxury of waiting anymore.
The Second Amendment community is going to be telling this story for a while: the opinion that became the first federal appeals court ruling to strike down a state assault weapons ban was written by a judge appointed by Joe Biden.
Judge Arianna Julia Freeman was confirmed to the Third Circuit in 2022. She is not a conservative jurist by any conventional metric. And yet when she applied the Bruen text-and-history framework to New Jersey’s laws, the law failed the test. This is exactly what Justice Thomas’ majority opinion in Bruen was designed to produce: a constitutional standard that is the same regardless of who is applying it, because the question is historical rather than ideological. You cannot ask what policy outcome is best. You can only ask what the founding-era historical record shows. Judge Freeman asked that question and followed it where it led.
That matters not just symbolically but practically. A ruling authored by a Biden appointee is harder to dismiss as partisan outcome-seeking. It is also harder to stay. New Jersey’s attorney general has already promised to seek a stay of the ruling pending appeal. When she takes that request to the Third Circuit, the fact that the majority was 10-5 and included judges across the political spectrum makes a stay harder to justify.
The Third Circuit’s ruling directly governs the states in its jurisdiction: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. None of Pennsylvania, Delaware, or the Virgin Islands have assault weapons bans comparable to New Jersey’s, so the direct practical effect is primarily in New Jersey. But the indirect effect reaches every state with an assault weapons ban.
| New Jersey | Direct effect. Ban on semi-auto rifles and 10-round magazine limit both struck. State seeking stay. Significant uncertainty in enforcement while appeal proceeds. |
|---|---|
| Connecticut | Grant v. Higgins is the case SCOTUS granted cert on. Second Circuit upheld CT’s ban. Now directly in conflict with Third Circuit. The case going to SCOTUS just got more urgent. |
| Illinois | Seventh Circuit upheld PICA 8 days before Third Circuit ruling. Now a clear circuit split. Illinois’ ban is the conflict case the Supreme Court will have to resolve. |
| Maryland | Fourth Circuit upheld MD ban. Held in place pending SCOTUS ruling. The Third Circuit split means SCOTUS will move faster. |
| Virginia | SB749 statewide injunction took effect July 21. Already subject to four active lawsuits. Third Circuit ruling strengthens plaintiffs’ constitutional arguments. |
| California | Ninth Circuit has upheld CA ban historically. Third Circuit ruling does not bind Ninth Circuit but creates Supreme Court pressure to resolve the split nationally. |
| All others | NY, WA, OR, HI, RI, DE, CO (Aug 1 effective) — all watching SCOTUS. Third Circuit ruling accelerates the timeline to a national constitutional resolution. |
The path from here to a definitive national ruling is clearer than it has ever been. New Jersey will seek a stay of the Third Circuit ruling, likely from the Third Circuit itself and then from the Supreme Court if the circuit denies it. If the ruling is not stayed, New Jersey gun stores can resume selling semi-automatic rifles and standard-capacity magazines while the legal challenge works through. That is a significant practical development for New Jersey gun owners.
At the Supreme Court level, the Viramontes and Grant cases are already on the docket for the 2026-2027 term. The justices set those cases for argument before the Third Circuit ruled. Now they’ll be deciding the same question with a clear circuit split on the table. The brief-writing process will absorb Friday’s ruling immediately. Every petitioner, respondent, and amicus brief will engage with the Third Circuit’s reasoning and the Seventh Circuit’s contrary reasoning.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Viramontes/Grant was always going to be the definitive answer. Friday’s ruling made that answer more necessary and, arguably, more foreseeable. When a Biden-appointed judge in a 10-5 en banc ruling applies Bruen and strikes an assault weapons ban, that is Bruen working as designed. The question the Supreme Court will answer is whether Bruen says what the Third Circuit says it says. Based on the composition of the current Court and the reasoning of the Bruen majority, the Second Amendment community has reason for genuine optimism about what that answer will be.
“What this Third Circuit opinion shows is that there are very few gun laws that are safe from being struck down right now.” — Adam Winkler, UCLA law professor and gun law scholar, July 17, 2026
Every federal circuit court to consider assault weapons bans had upheld them. That streak is over. The Third Circuit broke it on Friday with a 10-5 en banc ruling that is 192 pages long, written by a Biden appointee, and founded directly on the Bruen text-and-history framework the Supreme Court established in 2022.
This is not the final ruling. New Jersey will fight it. A stay may delay its implementation. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Viramontes and Grant — expected by summer 2027 — will supersede it with a national standard. But for right now, today, the state of the law is this: the Third Circuit says assault weapons bans violate the Second Amendment, the Seventh Circuit says they don’t, and the Supreme Court is going to resolve that conflict within the next 12 months.
The Second Amendment community has been waiting a long time for a federal appeals court to say what the Third Circuit said Friday. It’s worth a moment to recognize what happened — and then get back to watching the courts, because the most important ruling of all is still coming.
