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 third US circuit court of appeals said on Friday in its opinion that the state’s ban on all semiautomatic rifles it deems to be “assault firearms” and its restriction on “large capacity ammunition magazines” were unconstitutional.
New Jersey’s attorney general, Jennifer Davenport, a Democrat whose office defended the law, told the Associated Press that the decision is “as unfortunate as it is legally incorrect”.
“Gotta maximize the body count of school children”
-These judges, probably
As a thought experiment, if someone attacks me with lethal intent, and I grab what is by your definition an assault weapon and not a self defense tool, does that make my defense of self and family invalid? Do I now somehow become the aggressor in this scenario because I am weilding a weapon of war? Is it only ethical for me to defend myself with a pistol? Am I bound by eithics to ensure I don’t have an advantage in effective range over my attacker?
The Remington Model 700 was introduced in the 1960’s and adapted to become a sniper rifle by the US military in the late 1980’s. Many of the modifications made to the design for military use are the same that competitive sport shooters would make to improve long range accuracy. It was a hunting tool first, but became a highly effective weapon of war used with the intent to kill. Would it be prudent to ban this firearm as well, or does the 700 get a pass based on the origin of it’s design?
I ask, not because I cradle my rifle at night praying for a break in or because I’m not concerned about gun violence, but because campaigns to ban assault rifles so often focus on the origin of these designs rather than on the technical details and civilian uses of the firearm in question. This becomes important when, as is all but inevitable, that ban winds up in court. As gets mentioned so often the only fundamental difference between an AR-15 and any number of small caliber hunting rifles (which can often be found chambered in 5.56/.223 just like an AR-15) is that the AR-15 has a pistol grip. It’s an uneven application of the legal process even before you consider 2A rights.
exactly my point: let’s tease out semantics instead of addressing the problem of too many firearms in too many hands with too little grey matter to safely use and secure.
god forbid we prevent kids from blasting schools and nutbags from sending thousands of rounds into a fucking concert, nah, your primary concern is semantics.
watch out, someone over there called a magazine a clip, get on ye high horse semantics ranger, you’re the pedants choice for correct answers.
useless as a rubber fucking crutch, but the pedant’s choice and you should be proud.
I don’t care what you call it. The semantics don’t matter to me. We can do it in any terms you like.
But if you ban gun A because it’s weapon of war, but allow gun B to be sold because it’s a hunting tool, when both are semi-automaitc guns shooting the same bullet out of clips, then your ban accomplished nothing of substance and won’t be around long.
But all that matters is people don’t have that one specific kind of gun, right?
I’m not even arguing the usefulness of bans here, just that the people trying to enact them write them in a way that undermines their purpose and leads to a defeat in the courts. You want to ban assault rifles? Write better legislation.
quack quack quack quack. we had an assault weapons ban in the 90s and when they let it expire, the number of mass shootings skyrocketed and it became the number one choice for kid murder. you can piss and moan about how “an m16 is a classic american rifle” and mewl about magazines, and entirely ignore the actual history.
until we dx citizen’s united, it’s a rather pointless exercise as the NRA is willing to spend so much russian money in our elections.
nah. we just need a court that understands the full fucking text of the 2a instead of a portion.
Lol
At what point in this conversation have I ever pissed and moaned about the M-16 being a classic American rifle or complained about magazine capacity? At what point did I ever deny or disparage the effectiveness of the 90’s Federal ban?
And you’ll get that court about the time you get rid of Citizen’s United. But why not at least encourage lawmakers to get rid of the low hanging fruit that gives them an easy excuse to strike new gun laws down and force the lobbyists to spend more of that money to defeat it?
Or you can blame people for pointing out obvious flaws in these policies and accuse those people of arguing for standpoints they’ve never held…
Take whatever approach you think is most effective.