New Jersey isn’t known as a gun friendly zone. While they’ve had Republican governors (though, some would argue that Chris Christie is a RINO and not really conservative), they are by no means friendly to traditionally conservative viewpoints on many issues.
One of those issues? The Second Amendment. New Jersey has a history of being more like Illinois or Maryland than Georgia or Texas when it comes to gun ownership.
But a pleasant surprise came out of a federal appeals court. Josh Kelety writes,
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that New Jersey’s bans on assault firearms and magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds are unconstitutional.
This is the first time a federal appeals court has struck down a state ban on such weapons, and it comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is set to consider whether bans on semiautomatic rifles violate the Second Amendment. Just last week, a different federal appeals court upheld Illinois’ ban on semiautomatic weapons.
Friday’s appeals court ruling in the New Jersey case goes further than a July 2024 ruling from a federal judge, who said that the state’s ban on AR-15s specifically was unconstitutional but upheld the provision barring larger magazines. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday in its opinion that the state’s ban on all semiautomatic rifles it deems to be “assault firearms” and restriction on “large capacity ammunition magazines” were unconstitutional.
Despite what the New Jersey Attorney General said (that the ruling is “legally incorrect”), this ruling is the legally correct ruling as it, unlike the law that it applied to, agrees with the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
Of course, I’m not surprised that the New Jersey AG said that about the ruling. It’s New Jersey which tends to agree with blue states more than red states on many state laws and policies.
In other words, they’re consistently wrong on the issue of gun rights.
Remember, anti-2A folks, like the New Jersey AG, tend to equate “I don’t like it” with “That’s illegal.”
Whether they like it or not has no relevancy on the legality of the issue. The law is the only issue there.
And the Second Amendment is clear.
