State “assault weapons” ban legislation continues to gain traction in various jurisdictions this legislative session. Often during the debates on these bills, there is disingenuous deference to those who followed the law as it previously existed and who are therefore able to retain newly prohibited firearms under a grandfather clause. Yet those can be a ploy, as anti-gun goal posts are always moving, and the work of anti-gun legislators is never done. Whether outright or incremental, a semiautomatic firearms ban has become an essential feature of any jurisdiction governed by anti-gun Democrats. This is a far cry from even a few years ago, when “universal background checks” were promoted as their top agenda item.
One incremental gun control law can only lead to another, more sweeping infringement. This fateful truism could now be playing out in real time in Rhode Island and may be coming to a state near you. Less than a year after the state’s “assault weapons” ban went into effect, the Rhode Island legislature is looking to amend the ban in a way that would render the grandfathering that protected the previously owned firearms useless.
The language originally provided that individuals who lawfully owned these specific firearms before July 1, 2026, were allowed to keep them, albeit with the further sale and transfer of the firearms prohibited. But with the addition of one word and a new deadline, H8073 could make owners who were initially protected into felons. The amendment would flip the prior arrangement on its head, allowing those who lawfully possessed the banned firearms prior to July 1, 2026, to sell or transfer them to an FFL or to an eligible resident of another state by the end of this year. Formerly lawful owners could not, however, thereafter possess them.
Eleven states currently have “assault weapon” bans in place, with various other states like Virginia, New Mexico, and Minnesota actively moving them through the legislatures this session. For now, Virginia is trying to take the supposedly “moderate” approach of a grandfather clause, although versions of the legislation have vacillated on whether they would ban possession of “large capacity” magazines outright. In New Mexico, the issue appears to be dead for the current session. And in Minnesota, Tim Walz is huffing and puffing his way back into the news cycle with his attempt to see his state’s residents deprived of America’s most popular rifles.
To be clear, however, no well-informed person on either side of the issue makes the mistake of believing that these proposed bans or registration schemes, even if enacted, will be crime control showstoppers. Rifles of any sort are underrepresented in the categories of firearms most often used to commit violent crime in the United States. The entire point of these laws is to attempt to normalize the banning of popular guns and to paint firearm design, not human behavior and all the complex drivers of it, as the primary factor in firearm-related crime.
The “most dangerous” firearm, as judged by its frequency of criminal misuse, is and has long been the handgun, simply because of its portability and concealability. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that handgun bans are “off the table” under the Second Amendment, because handguns are also (and largely for the same reasons) overwhelming used by law-abiding Americans to exercise their rights under that provision.
Similar popularity among the law abiding applies to semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15, so any judge faithfully applying the High Court’s precedents must come to the same conclusion about the unconstitutionality of banning them. Unless and until the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes on the issue, however, these dishonest and disingenuous legislative battles will continue.
Yet, unsurprisingly, the same federal circuit courts who previously denied any private right to keep or bear arms existed at all under the Second Amendment have upheld these state-wide bans. For reasons known only to the justices, and over the dissents of some of their colleagues, the Supreme Court has not accepted any of these decisions for review.
We thus await the next pivotal lower court decision in this category, ANJRC v. Platkin, currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and concerning New Jersey’s ban on “assault weapons” and “large capacity” magazines. Of note, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an amicus brief in this NRA-backed challenge supporting our position. DOJ has also sued the District of Columbia directly for its version of this sort of ban, and the District’s own highest court last week invalidated D.C.’s ban on “large capacity” magazines.
Additionally, we await the Supreme Court’s decision on the petition for review in Viramontes v. Cook County, a case from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit presenting the question whether the Second and 14th Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semi-automatic rifles.
Last year, while the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Snope v. Brown upholding Maryland’s “assault weapons” ban, as well as review in Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island, upholding Rhode Island’s magazine ban, Justice Brett Kavanaugh indicated the Court will likely address the AR-15 issues in the “next term or two.” Meanwhile, Justice Clarence Thomas dissented in those cases, expressing his frustration by stating, “I cannot see how AR-15s fall outside the Second Amendment’s protection … I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America”.
We wholeheartedly agree, Justice Thomas, and we also impatiently wait for that sentiment to, at long last, be recognized as the law of the land.
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