So called “assault weapons,” including particularly AR-15s and similar lightweight semi-automatic rifles, have long been the target of gun control legislation. The Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller should have put a stop to such legislation, but it didn’t. Many states, including Maryland enacted new laws banning assault weapons in the years after Heller, and—in what appears to be open defiance of the precedents established in Heller and in subsequent cases—many lower courts, including several federal courts, have upheld those laws. The Supreme Court is eventually going to have to put a stop to that defiance. A recent decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will give it an excellent opportunity to do so.
In Heller, the Supreme Court found that Americans have a constitutional right to keep and bear weapons that are “in common use” and are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” In truth, that finding ought to have been sufficient to rule out assault weapons bans. AR-15s and similar rifles account for approximately 20 percent of all firearms sold in America. Americans currently own more than 24 million of them. They are, moreover, rarely used by criminals. Most of the almost 18,000 homicides in 2022 were committed with handguns. Only 3% were committed with a rifle of any kind. By any conceivable standard, therefore, AR-15 style rifles satisfy the criteria established in Heller, i.e., they are in common use by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.
Despite that undeniable fact, Maryland enacted a comprehensive ban on assault weapons in 2013, and the Fourth Circuit has upheld that ban twice, most recently in its recent opinion in Bianchi v. Brown. In an uncharacteristically ill-informed and poorly reasoned opinion, Judge Harvey Wilkinson held, “The assault weapons at issue fall outside the ambit of protection offered by the Second Amendment because, in essence, they are military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self- defense.” They are, he said, “like M-16 rifles, i.e., weapons of war that are most useful in military service.” If Judge Wilkinson and the rest of the majority actually believe this, they are woefully and inexcusably ignorant.
Military rifles like M-16s are fully automatic, i.e., they permit the user to fire a continuous stream of bullets with a single pull of the trigger. In contrast, AR-15s, are—like most firearms—semi-automatic, i.e., they require a separate pull of the trigger for each round fired. That is why, far from being “most useful in military service,” AR style rifles are not used by any military anywhere in the world.
On the other hand, there are several reasons why AR-15 style rifles are particularly well-suited for self-defense and defense of others. AR bullets are small, which makes them less deadly than the bullets used in most rifles and less likely to penetrate walls than the bullets used in most handguns. Moreover, because AR-15s are small and lightweight, and because they are often fitted with accessories like pistol grips, they are easy to handle and control in confined spaces, even for people with little upper body strength.
It is easy to see why AR-15s and similar weapons are the rifle of choice for millions of Americans and for police departments all over the country. Characterizing them as “weapons of war” isn’t just specious nonsense. It defames all those law-abiding citizens and law enforcement officers, and it “flaunts” binding precedent. The Supreme Court needs to put a stop to it.
For more information see this brief filed earlier this year by the John Locke Foundation, the Independence Institute, and the International Law Enforcement Association & Trainers Association.
