Case Summary
Since 2018, with limited exception, New Jersey has banned the possession of firearm magazines able to hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. But these magazines are protected by the Second Amendment and are commonly owned, often as a standard part of guns kept by law-abiding Americans.
New Jersey’s ban on these magazines violates the People’s natural right to keep and bear arms, as protected by the Second Amendment. Accordingly, the Center to Keep and Bear Arms filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing against New Jersey’s unconstitutional ban.
“The Second Amendment protects the People’s natural right of self-defense,” said Cody J. Wisniewski, Director of MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms. “It is a right that rests in the hands of Americans to decide how to best protect themselves and their loved ones—not a right that can be whittled away by politicians with professional armed security.”
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Case History
In June 2018, New Jersey passed Assembly Bill No. 2761, banning possession of firearm magazines with a capacity of more than ten rounds of ammunition. Gun rights opponents frequently—and arbitrarily—define these devices as “large-capacity” magazines, a term with no technical meaning meant to imply these magazines are somehow abnormal.
The NJ law required owners to modify their magazines to permanently reduce their capacity, destroy them, or turn them over.
On the day that the bill became law the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs (ANJRPC) filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. ANJRPC alleges that the law violated the Second Amendment, the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ANJRPC sought to have the ban declared unlawful, and to obtain preliminary and permanent injunction on its enforcement.
In August 2018, the district court denied ANJRPC’s motion for preliminary injunction—applying the seriously flawed two-step analysis outlined in the Third Circuit case of United States v. Marzzarella (and employed by a majority of circuits across the nation).
In essence, this analysis claims that the “core” of the Second Amendment pertains only to the need to defend oneself in the home, and that any exercise of gun rights outside of that “core” is less important and can be more easily infringed.
The district court determined the supposed “core” of the Second Amendment was not burdened and upheld New Jersey’s ban using intermediate scrutiny (requiring only an “important” state purpose and “substantially related” means).
ANJRPC appealed, but a divided panel of the Third Circuit upheld the district court in December 2018, again employing the analysis from Marzzarella—over a dissent that accused the majority of applying the lowest possible degree of judicial scrutiny, and which noted that “people commonly possess large magazines to defend themselves and their families in their homes.”
After the case returned to the district court, the New Jersey state and local officials won a motion for summary judgment based on the Third Circuit panel’s opinion.
On appeal to another panel of the Third Circuit, ANJRPC argued that the earlier Third Circuit panel’s ruling was not binding upon the new panel, and that the earlier ruling was clearly in error. In September 2020, however, the new panel rejected these arguments, and a petition for en banc rehearing was denied on an 8-6 vote the following month.
ANJRPC filed a petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court on April 26, 2021.
The magazine ban has—narrowly, at times—survived or avoided legal challenges, through a misinterpretation of the Second Amendment employed by some federal courts. While the Supreme Court has upheld the People’s gun rights in recent years, these lower courts now insist that the “core” of the Second Amendment pertains only to self defense in the home—not in any other place—and that items such as these magazines are not needed in the home.
In reality, there is no home-limited “core” of the Second Amendment. The distinction is arbitrary and has no basis in the constitutional text.
The Second Amendment’s protections extend to magazines, which are merely the modern expression of a longstanding technology. Firearms capable of firing more than 10 rounds or shots have been in existence since the 16th Century. And magazines, both internal and external, have been integral to firearm use since the 17th Century.
