Rickards: No, the Third Circuit did not legalize assault rifles in New Jersey

OPINION

One would think that New Jersey’s elected officials, particularly its Governor and members of Congress, would have at least a passing familiarity with the firearms laws they have spent years defending. Apparently, that expectation is too high.

This past week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit struck down New Jersey’s so-called assault weapons ban, prompting the predictable hyperventilating that the court has somehow unleashed AR-15s upon an unsuspecting public. Governor Mikie Sherrill denounced the decision in a press release, saying, “weapons of war do not belong on our streets,” as though New Jersey has suddenly become the Wild West. Congressman Josh Gottheimer echoed the same sentiment, complaining about the court legalizing “weapons of war designed for the battlefield.”

There is just one problem: it isn’t true. The Third Circuit did not suddenly make AR-15-style rifles legal in New Jersey. New Jersey residents have been legally buying and owning those rifles for years.

Anyone who has walked into a licensed New Jersey gun store already knows this. Look at the wall behind the glass cases filled with handguns and, mixed in with the shotguns, you’ll commonly see an assortment of semi-automatic AR-15-style rifles for sale. These rifles look the same as any other AR-15, fire the same ammunition, at the same rate of fire, operate with the same semiautomatic action, and function in essentially the same manner as any AR-pattern rifles sold throughout most of the country. These are not black-market products or knock-offs. These semi-automatic, AR-15-style rifles were sold openly in accordance with New Jersey law before the Third Circuit decision, to anybody who had passed the necessary background check to legally purchase a firearm.

What New Jersey actually prohibited were certain specifically named models and rifles configured with certain prohibited features. Manufacturers responded exactly as one would expect, by producing “New Jersey-compliant” rifles. Adjustable stocks became fixed stocks, flash suppressors became muzzle brakes, and bayonet lugs disappeared. But the rifles continued to fire the same cartridges, operate the same way, and perform the same basic function. So what, we are now supposed to live in fear that the same rifle that yesterday had a fixed stock now has a collapsible one? Or that it might be able to be fitted with a bayonet? Has there been much bayoneting in this country since the Civil War?

Governor Sherrill seldom misses an opportunity to remind voters of her military service, and she reflexively cites it in her office’s press release to imply that it gives her a superior understanding of firearms. Fair enough. But one would expect that same expertise to extend to the firearms laws she is now sworn to enforce, with which she is apparently unfamiliar. Anyone with a working knowledge of New Jersey law knows that compliant AR-pattern rifles have been sold here continuously since well before Sherrill took office. If the Governor’s statements accurately reflect her defective understanding of the law, that is deeply concerning. If, instead, she understands the law perfectly well but chooses to describe the decision in a way that leaves the public with the opposite impression, that should concern us even more. Either way, it is difficult to reconcile her rhetoric with the legal reality.

It is true that the court also struck down New Jersey’s magazine capacity limitation, which stood at a ten-round maximum, down from fifteen when the law changed in 2018. Why ten? Why not twelve? Or nine? Or seven? The Legislature never identified a constitutional principle that magically transforms the eleventh cartridge into a threat to public safety. But we do know that there has never been any reason to believe that criminals intent on committing murder, robbery, or aggravated assault carefully limit themselves to ten rounds because the Legislature told them to. The burden instead fell almost entirely on people who had previously purchased magazines lawfully and who, by definition, were already
complying with the law. There is, of course, no evidence that this law ever achieved anything other than inconvenience for the law-abiding, but now we are to believe that this simple change in policy will turn our streets into Call of Duty.

And let us not forget the parade of horribles we were promised by Governor Murphy after the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, striking down New Jersey’s prohibition against concealed carry permits. We were warned that recognizing the constitutional right of ordinary citizens to carry firearms would lead to bloodshed and chaos. Instead, tens of thousands of New Jersey residents have obtained permits to carry handguns after background checks, fingerprinting, and training, and this has caused exactly zero problems. The predicted crime wave never arrived. Permit holders have done exactly what responsible, law-abiding citizens tend to do: obey the law.

Here we see that a pattern has emerged. New Jersey enacts highly visible firearms restrictions, predicts catastrophe if those restrictions are invalidated, and then quietly ignores the fact that the catastrophe never occurs. Cosmetic features are portrayed as though they fundamentally transform a firearm. Arbitrary magazine limits are defended as life-saving measures despite scant evidence they have produced measurable results. Constitutional rights are treated as existential threats even while reality stubbornly refuses to cooperate.

The people of New Jersey deserve an honest debate about firearms policy. And the truth is that we do have a lot of sensible firearms laws: background checks and waiting periods among them. But if our public officials (let us dispense with the term “leaders”) expect the public to continue to trust them on matters of constitutional rights and public safety, the least they can do is demonstrate that they understand the laws they are sworn to uphold, or, at a minimum, stop pretending those laws said something they never did.