Both bans
fall.
The full Third Circuit — fifteen judges — just held that New Jersey’s “assault firearms” ban is unconstitutional as to every semi-automatic rifle, and that its 10-round magazine limit falls with it. No federal court of appeals in America had ever struck either ban. This one struck both, on the same day, 10–4.
Nos. 24-2415, 24-2450 & 24-2506 · Document 125 · 192 pages
Argued en banc Oct. 15, 2025 · Freeman, J., for the court
2026
Three sentences before anything else
New Jersey’s 36-year-old rifle ban is unconstitutional — not just for the Colt AR-15, but for the entire class of semi-automatic rifles.
The 10-round magazine limit is unconstitutional too — the first time any federal appeals court has said so, anywhere.
Nothing is legal in New Jersey yet. The case goes back down for relief to be entered, the state will fight on, and the Supreme Court looms over everything.
What the court actually struck
The Assault Firearm Provisions
The LCM Provisions
Fifteen seats. Ten to strike.
The district court struck one rifle. The en banc court struck the class.
Judge Sheridan’s 2024 ruling was a careful half-step: he examined a single make and model and struck the ban as to the Colt AR-15 only, for self-defense in the home. The State called that overreach. The plaintiffs called it too timid. The full Third Circuit sided with the plaintiffs — and went further than Trenton ever did.
The Colt AR-15, by brand name, for use in the home — with the magazine ban left standing and the rest of the list untouched. Attorney General Platkin’s office called the damage contained and said the “overwhelming majority of our law remains intact.”
“Because the record supports the same result for all semi-automatic rifles — not only Colt AR-15s — we will modify the District Court’s order so that it deems the Assault Firearm Provisions unconstitutional with respect to the full class of semi-automatic rifles.” Plus the magazine ban, reversed.
“Regardless of where those lines may be drawn, the many millions of semi-automatic rifles in circulation for lawful purposes are plainly in common use.”
Six circuits said yes to the bans. Then this.
Until 11 a.m. on July 17, the federal courts of appeals were unanimous: every one to reach the question had upheld an “assault weapon” or magazine ban. The Seventh Circuit had reaffirmed its position eight days earlier. That wall of authority is what every state with a ban cites — and it just lost a brick the size of an en banc circuit.
“The majority isolates us as the only Court of Appeals in the Nation to afford constitutional protection to AR-15s and LCMs.”
How ten judges got there
Rifles are “Arms.” Full stop.
Step one was, in the court’s own word, straightforward. Heller defines “Arms” as any weapon of offense or defense, covering “modern instruments that facilitate armed self-defense” — and even the narrowest Founding-era definition said all firearms qualify. Semi-automatic rifles are firearms, so the Constitution presumptively protects keeping them. The same logic covers magazines, because a gun without its magazine is a paperweight.
Common use decides step two
The court put the “in common use” question where Wolford points: in the historical inquiry. Heller and Bruen teach that bans on weapons in common use for lawful purposes have no analogue in American tradition — and on this record the court did not even need to draw a line. “The many millions of semi-automatic rifles in circulation for lawful purposes are plainly in common use.”
New Jersey’s history failed
The State offered Bowie-knife statutes, slungshot laws, gunpowder-storage rules, and trap-gun bans. The court walked through each one and found no relevantly similar tradition: those laws punished carry modes and misuse — none flatly banned possession of a class of arms Americans commonly own. Sister circuits found those analogues persuasive. This court, sitting en banc, did not.
“The Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States” — and “local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate” the meaning of that fundamental right.
The United States called it ten months ago
“New Jersey’s complete bans on possessing rifles such as the AR-15 and magazines with a more-than-ten-round capacity violate the Second Amendment.”
Thirty-six years, in fourteen entries
The list is born
Gov. Jim Florio signs the Assault Firearms Law — a list of more than thirty named rifles, pistols, and shotguns plus anything “substantially identical,” sold to the public as banning guns “designed to wipe out the greatest number of people in the shortest possible time.”
The magazine cap drops to 10
Gov. Murphy signs the cut from 15 rounds to 10. The Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs sues immediately — the case that becomes docket 1:18-cv-10507.
Bruen resets the board
ANJRPC had already lost once in the Third Circuit. Days after Bruen, the Supreme Court vacates that loss and sends the magazine case back to be done right.
The rifle-ban suits arrive
Mark Cheeseman, Timothy Connelly, and the Firearms Policy Coalition file Cheeseman v. Platkin; ANJRPC’s members file Ellman. The district court consolidates all three challenges.
Half a win in Trenton
Judge Peter G. Sheridan strikes the ban as to one rifle — the Colt AR-15 — and upholds the magazine limit. Both sides appeal.
Panel argument
A three-judge panel hears the consolidated appeals in Philadelphia.
The full court steps in
Before the panel can rule, the Third Circuit takes the case en banc on its own motion. Every active judge will decide it.
The United States picks a side
The Justice Department files an amicus brief against New Jersey — its third against a state arms ban that year, after Wolford in the Ninth Circuit and Barnett in the Seventh.
En banc argument
Cooper & Kirk’s Peter Patterson and Clement & Murphy’s Erin Murphy — who argued Bruen itself — face New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum before the full bench.
Wolford v. Lopez
The Supreme Court hands down the decision this opinion leans on hardest — including the line that local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate the Second Amendment.
SCOTUS takes the AR-15 question
Certiorari granted in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, consolidated for October Term 2026.
One last round of briefs
The en banc court orders 1,500-word supplemental briefs on what Wolford and Hemani change. Due July 10, at noon, no extensions.
The Seventh Circuit goes the other way
Barnett v. Raoul upholds Illinois’s rifle and magazine bans. For eight more days, the circuits are unanimous.
Both bans fall
The full Third Circuit strikes the Assault Firearm Provisions as to every semi-automatic rifle and reverses on the magazine limit. 192 pages. Nine opinions. 10–4.
What the four dissenters say — honestly
“The Majority, however, holds that states cannot regulate weapons that are currently popular.”
The lead dissent would uphold both bans as regulations of “dangerous and unusual” weapons designed for the battlefield, and reads the majority’s common-use test as a popularity contest that manufacturers can rig by flooding the market.
“The majority isolates us as the only Court of Appeals in the Nation to afford constitutional protection to AR-15s and LCMs.”
Krause counts the circuits, invokes the “democratic will of the People of New Jersey,” and argues the court should at least have waited for the Supreme Court to decide Viramontes and Grant. The majority’s answer, quoting Wolford: local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate a fundamental right — “even when citizens express their local attitudes through their legislators.”
“I would remand in full.”
Chung would not have struck anything today — she writes that “common wear” in public, not just common use, should matter at step two, and would have sent the whole record back down. She joined only the remand portion of the judgment.
“I agree with the majority’s well-reasoned opinion because current Supreme Court precedent dictates that outcome.”
She would have held the case for the Supreme Court’s AR-15 ruling next term — and joined the majority in full anyway. Read that again: a judge who wanted to wait says the outcome is dictated by existing precedent. That is the quiet part of this opinion, said out loud.
The win is real. The fight is not over.
Nothing is legal in New Jersey yet
This is an appellate ruling on summary judgment, not an injunction. The case goes back to Judge Sheridan’s court for further proceedings and entry of relief, and the mandate has not issued. New Jersey’s statutes remain on the books and enforceable today. Nobody should buy, build, or carry anything based on this opinion alone.
Expect a stay fight, then a cert petition
New Jersey cannot ask for rehearing by a bigger bench — this was the whole bench. Its moves are a motion to stay the mandate and a petition to the Supreme Court. With Viramontes and Grant already granted for next term, the likeliest path is that everything freezes until the Court rules on the AR-15 question it has agreed to answer.
The remand still has work to do
The en banc court struck the ban as to the full class of semi-automatic rifles and the magazine limit. The listed pistols and shotguns — and the rest of the statute’s reach — go back to the district court to be resolved under this opinion’s framework.
The Supreme Court now has a real split
Until July 17, every circuit agreed these bans were fine, and the Justices could have dodged with a narrow opinion. Now a 15-judge en banc court has held the opposite of five circuits. Splits like this are what the Court exists to resolve — and it hears the issue this fall.
Why this lands in Virginia
The “every circuit agrees” wall is gone
Virginia’s defense of SB 749 has leaned on the Fourth Circuit’s Bianchi from the first brief: every federal appeals court to look at an AWB upheld it, so Richmond was on safe ground. That consensus died today. The next brief defending SB 749 has to explain why a full en banc circuit — applying Bruen, Rahimi, and Wolford — just held the opposite.
Same DOJ, same theory, new receipt
The Justice Department brief in this case came from the same building running United States v. Commonwealth of Virginia — the § 12601 suit against SB 749 filed July 1. DOJ told the Third Circuit that complete bans on AR-15-type rifles and 10-plus-round magazines violate the Second Amendment. A federal court of appeals just agreed, in full, on a 192-page record.
The magazine holding reaches further than the rifle one
SCOTUS granted cert on rifles, not magazines. The Third Circuit just became the first appeals court to strike a magazine limit — the exact question Duncan v. Bonta is waiting on at the Court. Virginia’s SB 749 includes a 15-round cap. Every magazine ban in America, including that one, now has a square circuit conflict behind the challenge.
What this page knows, and how
Built from the opinion itself, hours after release
Every holding, vote, and quotation on this page was checked against Document 125 — the 192-page slip opinion filed July 17, 2026 — not against anyone’s summary of it. The vote count is the judgment count: ten judges voted to strike both provisions, four to uphold them, one to decide nothing today.
No state response yet
When this page was built, neither Attorney General Platkin nor Governor Sherrill had issued a statement on the ruling. Platkin defended the law through every stage and said in 2024 that the district-court version of this ruling “weaponizes the Second Amendment.” Assume an aggressive defense: a stay motion and a cert petition.
This ruling changes no one’s legal exposure today
Possession of a listed firearm or a 10-plus-round magazine in New Jersey remains a crime under state law until relief is actually entered and effective. An appellate opinion is not a permission slip. If the mandate is stayed pending Supreme Court review — a real possibility — the bans stay enforceable while that plays out.
The Supreme Court can still have the last word
Viramontes and Grant will be argued in the term that starts October 2026. If the Court protects the AR-15, today’s opinion becomes the model. If it goes the other way, today’s opinion is the one that gets vacated. This page reports a huge win, not a final one.