NJ Gun-Storage Bill Collides With Heller After AR-15 Ban Loss

“New Jersey’s answer to losing on semi-automatic rifles and magazines is a bill that would render legal firearms inoperable at home — but the U.S. Supreme Court already told us that turns constitutionally-protected firearms into bricks, and the Third Circuit just quoted that ruling back to Trenton in the same opinion that struck down the state’s AR-15 ban.” — Professor Mark W. Smith, Four Boxes Diner Host

New Jersey lawmakers, having just lost badly at the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, are casting about for a way to keep regulating guns out of existence without technically banning them. According to Politico’s July 23 report, Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald is reviving Assembly Bill A3560, a measure that has languished in Trenton since 2021 without ever reaching a floor vote. It would apparently require gun owners to store every firearm in their home unloaded and locked, with stiff penalties for noncompliance. Greenwald told Politico the bill is “the next thing I’m looking to do” on gun control. In my view, such a law would not survive contact with the Constitution, and the Supreme Court told us why back in 2008.

A N.J. BILL REVIVED BY DESPERATION

The timing is not subtle. On July 17, 2026, the en banc Third Circuit ruled in Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, Inc. v. Attorney General New Jersey, consolidated with Cheeseman v. Davenport, No. 24-2415, that New Jersey’s bans on semi-automatic rifles — including the AR-15 — and on magazines holding more than ten rounds violate the Second Amendment. That ruling dismantled a regulatory regime Governor Jim Florio signed in 1990.

With the assault-weapons ban and magazine ban effectively gone, Trenton Democrats are searching for a substitute that accomplishes the same disarmament by different means.

A Senate Democratic spokesperson told Politico only that the chamber is “evaluating all available legislative and legal options.” Greenwald’s answer appears to be: lock every gun up, unload it, and call it safety. It is nothing of the sort. A locked, unloaded firearm cannot be deployed against an intruder in the time a home invasion actually takes. What it can do is guarantee the law-abiding resident is unarmed at the one moment that the Second Amendment exists to address.

HELLER ALREADY ANSWERED THIS

The Supreme Court confronted this exact scheme in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), which struck down a D.C. law requiring that lawful firearms be kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.” Justice Scalia wrote for the Court: “We must also address the District’s requirement (as applied to respondent’s handgun) that firearms in the home be rendered and kept inoperable at all times. This makes it impossible for citizens to use them for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional.”

The Court rejected the District’s argument that the statute contained an implicit self-defense exception, noting that the D.C. Court of Appeals had already construed the statute, in McIntosh v. Washington, 395 A.2d 744 (D.C. 1978), to forbid residents from using stored firearms to stop intruders. A firearm that must be unloaded and locked before it can be fired is not a firearm at all for purposes of the emergency it exists to answer. It becomes a hammer, or a brick (at best).

Heller also forecloses the fallback argument that owners can keep one gun accessible so long as some guns are locked up. The Court held it “is no answer” that a prohibition on one class of arms is permissible “so long as the possession of other firearms (i.e., long guns) is allowed,” because Americans are entitled to choose the arm best suited to defending themselves, not the one the government deigns to leave operable.

THE THIRD CIRCUIT ALREADY QUOTED IT BACK TO TRENTON

New Jersey does not even get the luxury of relitigating this point regionally. The same en banc opinion that killed its rifle and magazine bans quoted Heller’s inoperability holding directly, describing the now-voided D.C. law as requiring “that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times, rendering it inoperable.” The Third Circuit then cited Heller’s guarantee of “an individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation” — a right the Third Circuit noted, following New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), extends outside the home as well. A safe-storage mandate modeled on the D.C. law that Heller invalidated is not a novel legal theory for New Jersey to test. It is the losing argument, restated, in the circuit that just ruled against the state on the underlying weapons themselves.

SIDE BAR: A FURTHER NOTE ABOUT THE PHRASE “SEMI-AUTOMATIC RIFLES”

For the good of the order, I want to remind Team 2A that precision in terminology matters in our fight for the right to keep and bear arms. I have repeatedly explained that it is best to use the phrase “semi-automatic rifles” rather than alternative phrases such as “assault weapons” or even “modern sporting rifles.” The phrase “semi-automatic rifles” tracks the language of then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent in Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F.3d 1244 (D.C. Cir. 2011), as well as the language of the questions now presented in the recent-cert grants before SCOTUS in the Grant v. Higgins and Viramontes v. Cook County cases. The semi-automatic rifle language ties such rifles to the semi-automatic handguns Heller already protects.

And the right to bear arms is not narrowly tailored to address only resisting government tyranny. No, the right to keep and bear arms is about protecting the ability to confront any grave threat to life, from a violent intruder to an armed assailant, to a terrorist, to a rabid animal. In that moment of confrontation, a firearm must be found, unlocked, and loaded before it functions as intended, i.e., to thwart all forms of tyranny.

Colorado’s Semi-Auto Ban Says August 1–But Gun Buyers Were Cut Off July 28

About Mark W Smith

Constitutional attorney and bestselling author Mark W. Smith hosts the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment channel on Youtube and Rumble; is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court Bar; and his Second Amendment scholarship has been cited by many attorneys and judges, including by attorneys in legal briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Smith’s most recent book is ISRAEL DISARMED: What the October 7 Attack Teaches Americans about the Right to Bear Arms and he has lectured at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Princeton University, the Wharton School at U. Penn, and Oxford University. He is a frequent speaker at the Federalist Society’s Annual National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C.