The Bay State’s ban on the sale of certain semi-automatic firearms and ammunition magazines does not run afoul of the Second Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
A three-judge panel for the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the denial of a preliminary injunction against Massachusetts’ ban on the sale of “assault weapons,” such as the popular AR-15, and ammunition magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds. It determined that the logic of a prior ruling upholding Rhode Island’s ban on certain magazines applied to the weapons banned by Massachusetts law.
“A straightforward application of our prior holding in Ocean State Tactical supports the Commonwealth’s demonstration that the Massachusetts Ban’s AR-15 restriction ‘is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,'” Judge Gary Katzmann wrote in Capen v. Campbell. “This means that Appellants have failed to demonstrate at this stage that the Ban is unconstitutional in all its applications.”
The ruling extends the unbeaten streak for states defending hardware bans at the federal appellate level ever since the Supreme Court handed down its New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen decision in 2022. It will undoubtedly add to the growing sense of frustration among gun-rights advocates who believe Supreme Court precedent forecloses sales bans on common semi-automatic firearms and the magazines that come standard with them.
The National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), the plaintiff in this case, did not respond to a request for comment. The group sued over Massachusetts’ bans in 2022, shortly after the High Court handed down the Bruen decision. They were first upheld by US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV in December 2023 after Saylor ruled that the banned items fit within the country’s historical tradition of regulating “dangerous and unusual” weapons.
Between that ruling and Thursday’s update on appeal, the First Circuit issued a separate opinion upholding Rhode Island’s nearly identical ban on ammunition magazines in March of 2024.
“The justification for the law is a public safety concern comparable to the concerns justifying the historical regulation of gunpowder storage and of weapons like sawed-off shotguns, Bowie knives, M-16s and the like,” Judge William Kayatta wrote in Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island. “The analogical ‘how’ and ‘why’ inquiry that Bruen calls for therefore strongly points in the direction of finding that Rhode Island’s LCM ban does not violate the Second Amendment.”
Thursday’s panel said that holding controlled the outcome of the plaintiff’s challenge to Massachusetts’ magazine law.
As for the state’s ban on AR-15s and similar semi-automatic firearms, the panel said that it was appropriate to follow the same “nuanced approach” to the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment test that it followed in the Rhode Island case.
“We begin our ‘nuanced approach’ by considering whether ‘historical precedent’ from before, during, and even after the founding evinces a comparable tradition of regulation’ to the Ban’s AR-15 restriction,” Katzmann wrote. “The metric we employ in this comparability analysis is ‘how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen’s right to armed self-defense.'”
The panel determined that Massachusetts’ AR-15 ban posed a limited burden on self-defense because the plaintiffs failed to “demonstrate a single instance where the AR-15 — or any other banned weapon — has actually been used in a self-defense scenario.” By contrast, the panel said that the state’s expert witnesses testified that AR-15s offer “limited self-defense utility” because they needed to be fired with two hands and use ammunition that “easily penetrate[s] common household construction materials.”
The panel then said this minimal self-defense burden was comparable to the burden imposed by historical weapons regulations aimed at preventing “mass deaths and violent crime unrelated to self-defense,” citing the same mix of Founding Era through 20th Century gun laws as the Court in Ocean State Tactical.
“On both the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ metrics of Bruen and Rahimi‘s analogical inquiry, then, the Commonwealth has at least preliminarily demonstrated that the Massachusetts Ban (as it pertains to assault weapons like the AR-15) ‘is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms,'” Katzmann concluded.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell (D.) called the panel’s decision “a tremendous victory” for the state.
“Massachusetts has some of the strongest common sense gun laws in the country, and we know they are effective in ensuring our communities, especially our children, remain safe,” she said in a statement provided to The Reload. “I will continue to vigorously defend these laws.”
The panel handed down its decision the same day the Supreme Court held its tenth conference featuring Ocean State Tactical and a case against Maryland’s assault weapons ban. Should the Court agree to hear either case, it would directly impact the future of Massachusetts’ related laws.
In the meantime, the ruling allows Massachusetts to continue enforcing its restrictions on firearms and magazines. The plaintiffs can either appeal the decision or return to the district court to argue the case on its merits.
UPDATE 4-18-2025 2:07 PM EASTERN: This piece has been updated with quotes from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.
