Wartime Weapons Have No Place in Self Defense, Brief Argues

Amicus Brief

TRENTON — Today, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell led a multistate amicus brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in support of Cook County, Illinois, which is continuing to defend its assault weapons ban from a Second Amendment challenge.

The coalition of 19 states urges the court to uphold a March 2024 decision from the Northern District of Illinois, which said that Cook County’s regulation of the sale and possession of assault weapons within its borders is consistent with the Second Amendment.

“We can respect the Second Amendment while implementing commonsense firearms restrictions that promote public safety,” said Attorney General Platkin. “Weapons intended for wartime use, which have the capacity to kill the maximum number of people in the shortest amount of time, were never intended to be used for self-defense purposes.”

Cook County has regulated assault weapons since 1993, and strengthened its existing weapons ordinance with the Blair Holt Assault Weapons Ban in 2006, named after the 16-year-old son of a Chicago police officer who was killed aboard a city bus after school.

Assault weapons are disproportionately used in mass shootings, defined as where four or more fatalities take place. The amicus brief argues that Cook County’s law is well within the country’s historical tradition of reasonable firearm regulations and that assault weapons are not protected by the Second Amendment because they are not weapons commonly used or suitable for self-defense.

The amicus brief notes that States and local jurisdictions are well within their rights to enact restrictions on dangerous weapons, accessories, and ammunition that pose a threat to public safety and public health. These reasonable restrictions include limitations on the public carry, possession, and sale of many types of weapons, accessories, and forms of ammunition that are not suitable for self-defense and undermine the public’s safety. Semiautomatic assault weapons, such as AR-15 and AK-47-style rifles, fall into this category. They inflict catastrophic injuries and are uniquely devastating in mass shootings. Commonsense assault weapons restrictions are intended to reduce these senseless injuries and deaths.

In addition, the amicus brief explains that assault weapons are not presumptively protected by the Second Amendment because they are not commonly used or suitable for self-defense. Assault weapons were designed and engineered for military combat, and to create as many devastating injuries and deaths as quickly as possible.

Furthermore, the United States has a long historical tradition of regulating and imposing restrictions on new and distinctively dangerous forms of weaponry. For example, historical gunpowder storage laws and other rules and regulations were explicitly intended to prevent threats to public safety by limiting the aggregation of arsenals far beyond what would be sufficient for self-defense. States and the federal government have long had to adopt laws and regulations to cope with new weapon technologies that create public safety threats if there is no valid purpose for their use in self-defense.

New Jersey and Massachusetts have long had similar commonsense gun safety measures in place, and this is not the first time the Attorneys General of New Jersey and Massachusetts have worked together. In 2023, Attorney General Platkin and Massachusetts Attorney General Campbell led several amicus curiae briefs supporting state restrictions on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.

The following jurisdictions joined New Jersey and Massachusetts in this brief: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

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