A federal appeals court struck down New Jersey's decades-old ban on so-called assault weapons, and the ruling's author, a Biden-appointed judge, has left progressive legal commentators scrambling to explain how the Second Amendment won with bipartisan support on the bench.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled 10-5 on July 17 that New Jersey's Assault Firearms Act and its restrictions on magazines holding more than 10 rounds violate the Second Amendment. Judge Arianna J. Freeman, appointed by President Biden, wrote the majority opinion, a fact that has drawn as much attention as the ruling itself. Three Biden appointees and one Obama appointee voted with the majority to strike down a ban that had been continuously enforced since 1990, making it the longest-running such law in the country.
No federal appeals court had ever struck down a state assault weapons ban before this decision. Every other circuit to consider the question ruled the opposite way. New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport acknowledged as much, stating, "Every other federal circuit court to consider the issue has come out the other way."
The majority applied the framework the Supreme Court established in its landmark 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. That ruling requires courts to evaluate gun regulations against the nation's historical tradition of firearms regulation, not simply weigh them under a balancing test that lets judges defer to legislatures. The Third Circuit found New Jersey's ban could not survive that standard.
Freeman's opinion found that semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 are in "common use for lawful purposes," with millions in civilian circulation across the country. Under Bruen and the earlier District of Columbia v. Heller decision, firearms in common use are protected by the Second Amendment. The court did not limit its finding to Colt-branded AR-15s, which was the narrower focus of the district court below. Instead, it expanded the holding to cover all semiautomatic rifles affected by the ban.
Freeman wrote in the majority opinion:
"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 also addressed the tension between founding-era firearm regulations and those that came later. Freeman noted that "the principles underpinning Founding-era firearm regulations pointed in one direction while the principles underpinning mid-to-late-nineteenth century laws pointed in the opposite direction." The majority resolved that tension in favor of the earlier tradition, the one closer to the ratification of the Second Amendment.
Judge Tamika Montgomery-Reeves, another Biden appointee, concurred, writing, "I agree with the majority's well-reasoned opinion because current Supreme Court precedent dictates that outcome." That line alone should give pause to anyone who wants to dismiss the ruling as partisan overreach. Two Biden-appointed judges looked at the Supreme Court's own precedent and concluded the ban had to go.
Not everyone on the left took the ruling so calmly. Slate columnists Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern published a column on July 24 that framed the decision not as a straightforward application of precedent but as a strategic gift to the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority.
Lithwick and Stern acknowledged Freeman's liberal credentials, and then argued that made the ruling worse, not better. They wrote:
"Although Freeman is very much a liberal judge, this was not a grudging application of Heller and Bruen. She went all-out, enthusiastically applying a maximalist interpretation of Supreme Court precedents. She even expanded the holding beyond Colt AR-15s, which is what the district court had focused on, and applied her judgment to all assault rifles across the board."
Their complaint, stripped to its core, is that a liberal judge faithfully applied the law as the Supreme Court wrote it, and that this faithfulness is somehow a problem. The Slate columnists did not argue that Freeman got the legal analysis wrong. They argued that her willingness to follow Bruen to its logical conclusion will make it harder for progressives to fight the next battle.
The pair went further, claiming the ruling "creates the false impression of consensus and momentum where it doesn't actually exist." They predicted the Supreme Court's conservative justices would use Freeman's authorship to bolster their own position. One of the columnists wrote, "I can see...[SCOTUS's] conservative supermajority boosting the fact that Judge Freeman wrote this opinion to emphasize that this isn't just a liberal vs. conservative thing."
In a revealing aside, Lithwick and Stern drew a comparison to abortion access, asking: "...the Supreme Court has told us that access to medication abortion is not a constitutional right. Yet somehow access to assault weapons is a fundamental right?" The comparison collapses on contact. The Second Amendment explicitly protects the right to keep and bear arms. No comparable textual provision exists for medication access of any kind. The Supreme Court in Dobbs returned abortion policy to elected legislatures precisely because it found no such enumerated right. The Third Circuit in this case found one, because the Constitution spells it out.
The ruling's significance extends well beyond New Jersey. The Supreme Court is already set to hear arguments, expected in December 2026, on consolidated challenges to assault weapons bans from Illinois and Connecticut, in the cases Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins. The Third Circuit's decision now sits as the most prominent appellate precedent on the question, and it points decisively toward striking down such bans.
UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler told reporters, "What this Third Circuit opinion shows is that there are very few gun laws that are safe from being struck down right now." That assessment, coming from a scholar who is not a Second Amendment maximalist, captures the legal landscape after Bruen more honestly than Slate's framing does.
Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, called it "another devastating blow to the authoritarian war on gun owners." The NRA's John Commerford described it as a "historic victory for the NRA, the Second Amendment, and law-abiding Americans."
The en banc decision, meaning the full bench of active Third Circuit judges heard the case, not just a three-judge panel, carries more weight than a typical appellate ruling. And the 8-5 margin on the assault weapons ban, with bipartisan judicial support, makes it harder for critics to dismiss the outcome as ideologically driven.
The Supreme Court's current term has already produced consequential decisions across multiple areas of law. The Court struck down coordinated campaign spending limits in a major First Amendment case earlier this term, signaling a willingness to enforce constitutional text even when the political class objects.
That pattern has not always pleased the right. Conservatives directed sharp criticism at Justice Amy Coney Barrett after two losses in a single week, a reminder that the Court's conservative majority does not always move in lockstep.
But on the Second Amendment, the trajectory since Bruen has been consistent. Courts at every level are being forced to apply the text-and-history framework, and laws that cannot meet that standard are falling. New Jersey's ban, one of the oldest in the nation, is now among them.
Lithwick and Stern's column is worth reading not for its legal analysis but for what it concedes. They do not argue that Freeman misread Bruen. They do not claim the historical record supports New Jersey's ban. They do not identify a factual error in the majority opinion. Their objection is that a liberal judge followed conservative precedent faithfully, and that this faithful application will make it easier for the Supreme Court to do the same.
That is not a legal argument. It is a political one. And it reveals the bind progressives now find themselves in on firearms law. The Supreme Court set the rules in Bruen. Lower courts, including judges appointed by Democratic presidents, are applying those rules. The results are consistent. And the left's response is not to challenge the reasoning but to lament that the reasoning is being followed.
The First Circuit recently sided with the Trump administration in a separate dispute, another example of appellate courts applying the law as written rather than as progressives wish it read. The pattern is not a conspiracy. It is what happens when the Supreme Court issues clear precedent and lower courts take it seriously.
New Jersey has not yet announced whether it will seek Supreme Court review, but the path forward is narrow. With the Court already preparing to hear major constitutional questions across several areas of law, the justices may soon have the opportunity to settle the assault weapons question for the entire country.
When a Biden-appointed judge writes a thorough, well-reasoned opinion striking down a gun ban, and the best the opposition can muster is that she followed the law too well, the Second Amendment is in stronger shape than its critics want to admit.
