News broke yesterday over the mercury fields of New Jersey that a Federal judge had thrown out part of the state’s “assault weapons” ban.
U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan issued an order on July 30 declaring that including the Colt AR-15 rifle on the list of firearms defined in the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice Section 2C:39-1 as an “assault firearm” and subjecting it to restrictions violates the Second Amendment and is incompatible with recent U.S. Supreme Court precedents.
“The AR-15 Provision of the Assault Firearms Law is unconstitutional under Bruen and Heller as to the Colt AR-15 for use of self-defense within the home,” Sheridan wrote in an accompanying memorandum, referring to two cases decided by the Supreme Court in 2022 and 2008, respectively.
Judge Sheridan refrained from applying Bruen or Heller to the 60 plus other restricted firearms or, claiming their “analysis of the Assault Firearms Law is limited to the firearm with which the Court has been provided the most information: the AR-15,” he wrote,” despite also stating that “a categorical ban on a class of weapons commonly used for self-defense is unlawful,”
I guess you have to be a judge to dovetail that sort of language without looking like a moron because it occurs to me that the actual right doesn’t mention any class of weapons, just the right to use them to defend yourself.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
If you have the right, and both Bruen and Heller affirm this, though neither to the extent necessary (or Sheridan would have had to toss the entire ban based on his AR-15 cogitations), then that’s the only knowledge applicable to the question.
Sheridan also declined to overturn the magazine capacity ban, arguing that “the law doesn’t restrict the number of magazines a person can own, just their capacity.” And that the “unprecedented rapidity and damage of mass shootings support a nuanced reading” of the historical analogs under the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen.”
Perhaps someone should inform the court that the most common means by which mass shootings end is not magazine size but the presence of equal or greater force. It is the lack of armed, law-abiding citizens and criminal knowledge of the abundance of soft target-rich environments.
New Jersey’s Attorney General “plans to appeal the portion of the ruling that declares the AR-15 ban unconstitutional while praising the other aspects of the ruling.” Of course, he does.
