By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
A federal appeals court panel has upheld the ban on so-called “assault weapons” in Massachusetts, setting up a split between the appellate courts as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to hear arguments in challenges to similar bans in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois.
A three-judge panel of the First U.S. Circuit Court handed down the ruling this week. The opinion was written by Circuit Judge Seth R. Aframe, a 2024 Joe Biden appointee. The case is known as Recchia v. Campbell.
Writing for the court, Judge Aframe observed, “We concluded ‘that the Massachusetts [b]an’s AR-15 restriction d[id] not impose a heavy burden on civilian self-defense.’ We then compared that burden to the burden arising from historical restrictions on Bowie knives, sawed-off shotguns, and machine guns, concluding that it was ‘reasonably clear that our historical tradition of regulating arms used for self-defense has tolerated’ burdens similar to those posed by’ the law’s ban on assault weapons.”
He further noted, “we concluded that the justification for the ban was analogous to justifications that have “underpinned a tradition of weapon regulation throughout American history.”
This decision comes only a week after an en banc panel at the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned New Jersey’s ban on semiautomatic rifles, declaring it to be unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
Joining Judge Aframe on the panel were Circuit Judges Sandra L. Lynch, a Bill Clinton nominee and Joshua D. Dunlap, a Donald Trump nominee.
The ban dates back to 2004 and was signed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney. But much has happened since then. There was the 2008 Supreme Court ruling in the Heller case striking down the handgun ban in Washington, D.C. and defining the Second Amendment as protective of an individual right to keep and bear arms. Then in 2010, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Supreme Court nullified Chicago’s handgun ban and incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment, further strengthening Second Amendment protections. In 2022, the high court handed down the Bruen ruling, striking down New York’s unconstitutional “good cause” restrictive concealed carry permit law. The First Circuit’s ruling directly contrasts with that of the Third Circuit, causing GunNewsNow.com to observe, “Despite the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen ruling, which requires modern gun regulations to be justified by historical analogs, the First Circuit appeared unmoved by the direction of recent federal jurisprudence.”
