Gun Owners Win: Federal Court Rejects New Jersey Rifle Ban

[00:00:03]While some appeals courts across the country are upholding state gun bans, the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals Friday ruled New Jersey's ban was unconstitutional.

[00:00:15]Welcome back to The States. I'm Greg Bishop. Now, Friday's ruling striking down New Jersey's ban on modern semi-automatic rifles and original capacity magazines, it could send a signal to other states with similar bans that a reckoning is looming.

[00:00:31]The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says the majority opinion in the Third Circuit authored by Joe Biden-appointed Circuit Judge Ariana Julian Freeman amounts to a warning shot across the bow of the anti-gun rights lawmakers that their years of eroding the Second Amendment, one restriction at a time, may be about to hit the proverbial brick wall.

[00:00:56]The US Supreme Court poised to hear arguments in two very similar gun ban cases when it convenes in October. Bans on semi-automatic rifles in Connecticut and Cook County here in Illinois, where I'm broadcasting from, are being challenged. And those cases having gone all the way through the district courts and the appeals courts with long conversations on what exactly these decisions mean, and now the appeals courts in those particular cases having made their opinions, it's on to the US Supreme Court with that Illinois case and that Connecticut case. Could New Jersey's case be right around the corner? Well, the Supreme Court recently declined to hear a challenge of Maryland's gun ban last year. Now, Second Amendment advocates say Friday's ruling out of the Third Circuit against New Jersey's law, that's adding momentum to these upcoming cases in front of the US Supreme Court.

[00:01:53]Second Amendment advocate Alan Gottlieb, he said Friday's ruling by the third circuit should help remind everyone the Second Amendment protects a fundamental right, not a government regulated privilege.

[00:02:05]Now, on social media after Friday's ruling out of the third circuit, gun control lobby Giffords posted, "Third Circuit's decision striking down New Jersey's assault weapons ban is deeply dangerous."

[00:02:18]The group said, "States have every right to protect their communities from assault weapons with large capacity magazines designed to inflict maximum harm."

[00:02:28]But one group that leads gun ban challenges all across the country, they say that the ruling signals bad things for gun control advocates. Brandon Combs, Firearms Policy Coalition president, said in the statement that Friday's ruling is a massive victory for the people and another devastating blow to the authoritarian war on gun owners.

[00:02:49]The Third Circuit correctly recognized what was obvious all along, the government cannot ban an entire class of commonly owned firearms, full stop. New Jersey's ban, they say, were always unconstitutional and today, Friday, the en banc court said so.

[00:03:07]And what does that en banc mean? Well, you have uh different types of reviews that appeals courts can do with just a three-judge ruling, which we've seen out of the Seventh Circuit US Court of Appeals in Illinois, just a three-judge ruling has the law being favored and plaintiffs being shot down, so to speak. And now they're going to possibly take that to the US Supreme Court or they could ask for the three-judge panel's ruling to be reviewed by the entire circuit appeals panel.

[00:03:41]And that's what happened in the third district with New Jersey's case. It wasn't a three-judge panel, it was the entire appeals court panel, an en banc panel. And uh will likely be going to the US Supreme Court as well expected that the other Illinois case will be going to the US Supreme Court. But what are some of the arguments here? As you saw from Giffords, they say that states have a right to pass laws to protect their citizens.

[00:04:10]But you've got the plaintiffs in these cases saying that states do not have that authority per the Second Amendment which says a people's right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And some of the more nuanced conversations here deal with especially what we saw out of one of the Illinois cases that just got a ruling from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals about whether or not certain semi-automatic firearms like an AR-15 which is a very popular modern sporting rifle is that too similar to fully automatic machine guns that members of the military have access to.

[00:04:50]And one thing about Illinois's case that just got out of the Seventh Circuit US Court of Appeals deals a lot with that question.

[00:05:00]Thousands of pages of evidence.

[00:05:02]Uh hours upon hours of witness testimony in open court during a bench trial. So all of that record could very well get up to the US Supreme Court whenever the Appeals Court case goes from the Seventh Circuit to the Appeals to the US Supreme Court. But we'll also be watching what happens with that New Jersey case as well as that is yet another in the long string of challenges against gun and magazine bans. And in other Second Amendment Judiciary news, a conservative federal appeals court judge teeing off once again on his left-wing judicial colleagues on the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals over what he described as their commitment to eschewing Second Amendment rights and to ensuring that any weapons restriction that a liberal state can dream up will somehow never contradict the Constitution. And in that filing, Ninth Circuit Judge Lawrence Van Dyke went further still, openly calling on the US Supreme Court to step in and quote bench slap the Ninth Circuit for repeatedly sidestepping, if not outright defying, the Supreme Court's mandates concerning Second Amendment rights and a consistent long-term demonstrated refusal to follow the law.

[00:06:19]Legal Newsline reporter Jonathan Billeck reports that Van Dyke's filing landed as a solo dissent to a decision from the full Ninth Circuit to refuse to review an earlier appellate ruling from a three-judge panel upholding as constitutional yet another California law prohibiting either the possession or carrying of certain kinds of weapons.

[00:06:41]This time, the challenged law banned switchblade knives.

[00:06:45]So, we'll be watching all of these cases and more as we continue to see where this tracks all the way to the US [music] Supreme Court.

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