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"
Kids don't spend 100% of their time at home. They go out in public, they go to friend's houses, they go to parties. They will, 100% of the time, find themselves in situations where irresponsible people are making decisions. Your job as a parent is to equip your children to navigate an unsafe world.
In some places, that means knowing what to do if you stumble upon a black bear on a trail. In other places, it means knowing what to do if you find a little baggy of white powder on the ground. In the United States, it means your kid should know what to do if they find a handgun in a bathroom at a truck stop while out on a field trip. That is not a situation a parent can prevent unless they are constantly hovering over their child. It's never likely but it can happen to anyone.
What would be irresponsible is not teaching your kid these skills so that they have to figure it out on their own, especially when they don't understand the seriousness of the situation.