New Jersey lost its AR-15 and magazine ban 10-5 in front of the full Third Circuit this summer. On Oct. 1, Attorney General Jennifer Davenport asked the Supreme Court for a do-over. The judge her petition leans on wrote that the ruling against New Jersey was "well-reasoned," and the ban stays in force while the justices think it over.

What did New Jersey actually ask the Supreme Court for?

The petition, Davenport v. Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, was filed Oct. 1. It does not argue that the Third Circuit got the law wrong. The whole petition, before the appendix, runs 10 pages, and its "Reasons for Granting" section is under four.

What it asks for is a hold. New Jersey wants the justices to sit on its case until they decide Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, the consolidated AR-15 cases set for argument on Dec. 2. Then, "if appropriate," the state wants the Court to "grant the petition, vacate the judgment of the Third Circuit, and remand the case." Lawyers call that a GVR. Gun owners can call it what it is: a request to erase a win they already have.

The judge New Jersey quotes agreed with the gun owners

To show the cases are interchangeable, the petition quotes Third Circuit Judge Tamika Montgomery-Reeves, who called the rifle laws in Viramontes, Grant and New Jersey "nearly identical" and "substantially similar." The petition cites her concurrence twice. It never mentions how her opinion starts.

Her first sentence, on page 88a of the state's own appendix: "I agree with the majority's well-reasoned opinion because current Supreme Court precedent dictates that outcome." Her only quarrel was timing. She thought the court should have waited for the Supreme Court before ruling. On the merits, she sided with the gun owners. That's the judge New Jersey picked to vouch for its request to undo the ruling.

Who wrote the opinion that struck down the ban?

The en banc opinion came from Judge Arianna Freeman, an appointee of President Biden. Ten of the court's 15 judges joined the judgment. They ranged from Chief Judge Michael Chagares to Montgomery-Reeves, another Biden appointee, to Judges Emil Bove and Jennifer Mascott, both confirmed in 2025 as President Trump's nominees. Judge Patty Shwartz wrote the main dissent, joined by Judges Cheryl Ann Krause, L. Felipe Restrepo and D. Brooks Smith.

That lineup matters. New Jersey can't wave this off as a right-wing panel stretching the law. Judges from both parties read Heller and Bruen and reached the same result.

What the Third Circuit found about the numbers

The majority's math is hard to argue with. The district court found "around 24 million AR-15s and similar sports weapons in circulation," a figure the opinion says is "surpassed only by the number of registered handgun owners within the United States." Then came the line that should embarrass Trenton: "New Jersey does not provide any data or statistics of its own to contradict" that number.

On magazines, the court said those rifles "typically come standard with twenty- or thirty-round magazines," and that "there are over 100 million 30-round AR-15 magazines in circulation." It noted New Jersey "does not meaningfully dispute the commonality" of the magazines it bans. The court held that arms "in common use for lawful purposes" can't be banned as a class, and it expanded the lower court's ruling from the Colt AR-15 alone to the full class of semi-automatic rifles.

New Jersey's own petition admits how arbitrary the magazine limit is

Look at how the state describes its own law. New Jersey capped magazines at 15 rounds in 1990, then dropped the limit to 10 in 2018. In the petition's own words, the law "imposes no limitation on the number of magazines" a person can own, and none on the "amount of ammunition" either.

So a resident can own a crate of 10-round magazines and thousands of cartridges with no trouble. Load an eleventh round into one magazine and he has committed a crime. The state presents that as a selling point. It reads more like an admission that the line was drawn for show.

The petition also warns that letting the ruling stand would bring a "flood of currently restricted weapons" into the state. That phrase isn't New Jersey's. It's borrowed from the Second Circuit's 2025 opinion upholding Connecticut's ban in NAGR v. Lamont, a case the Supreme Court is now holding too, according to the petition.

Why is the ban still being enforced?

Because the Third Circuit let it be. After the July 17 ruling, the court granted New Jersey's motion to stay its mandate "pending resolution of this Petition." The petition states plainly: "the LCM and Assault Weapons provisions remain in effect." AmmoLand reported the Aug. 4 stay when it came down.

Do the arithmetic on a hold. Viramontes is argued Dec. 2. Big Second Amendment decisions tend to land near the end of the term, in June. If the justices park New Jersey's petition until then, a ban that a federal appeals court called unconstitutional in July 2026 could stay on the books for most of another year. New Jersey has already won the one thing it could win: time.

What happens if the justices go along?

The petition points out that the Court is already holding three similar cases: NAGR v. Lamont (rifles and magazines), Duncan v. Bonta (California magazines) and Gator's Custom Guns v. Washington (Washington magazines). Holding New Jersey's case with them would be routine.

The danger is in the remand. Viramontes is about rifles. The Court did not take up magazines. New Jersey argues the decision "will likely clarify" magazine cases anyway, because the two "present overlapping methodological questions." If the Court rules narrowly on rifles and then sends New Jersey's case back, the state gets a fresh round of litigation on the magazine half of a ban it already lost. The Daily Caller noted that the Third Circuit decision created a split with the Ninth Circuit's ruling upholding California's magazine limit.

The real stakes are in December

New Jersey's petition is a bet that the Supreme Court will hand down something soft enough to relitigate. The gun owners in the case, including the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs and the Firearms Policy Coalition, which flagged the filing Oct. 2, need the opposite: a rule so clear that no state can dodge it by renaming a rifle or picking a new round count.

For now, millions of New Jersey residents live under a law that 10 federal judges, including two Biden appointees, have said violates the Constitution. Their state's answer was to ask for more time, and to cite a judge who sided with them on the merits. Watch Dec. 2.

Top photo: A Magpul rifle magazine seated in an AR-15. (Tony Webster, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)