Major Gun Ruling Could Spark Chain Reaction Ending At Supreme Court

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When it struck down New Jersey’s ban on modern semiautomatic firearms in July, a federal appeals court created a circuit split on an issue in a case the high court has been considering for over a year.

For most of its 2025-2026 term, the Supreme Court debated whether to consider Duncan v. Bonta, a case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit challenging California’s ban on standard-capacity magazines that was distributed for consideration 23 times. A “circuit split” occurs when federal appellate courts differ on how to handle similar cases, and often will be heard by the Supreme Court.

In the opinion authored by Circuit Judge Arianna Freeman, a Biden appointee, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit expanded an order by a federal district judge that had initially ruled that New Jersey’s ban on AR-15s violated the Second Amendment, saying the Second Amendment protected all modern semiautomatic rifles and standard-capacity magazines. The Third Circuit’s ruling clashes with rulings from other circuits, including the Ninth , which allowed California’s ban on standard-capacity magazines to stand in Duncan v. Bonta.

This isn’t Duncan v. Bonta’s’s first trip to the high court, either, as the Supreme Court considered it during two conferences before sending it back to the lower court following its June 2022 decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

The Supreme Court justices granted writs of certiorari in Viramontes v. Cook County, Illinois and Grant v. Higgins, involving bans imposed by Cook County, Illinois, (which includes Chicago) and Connecticut, consolidating the cases for hearing in its term starting in October.

Attorneys representing Virginia Duncan did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation regarding their filing.

“New Jersey ‘urge[d]’ the Third Circuit ‘to adopt the Ninth Circuit’s view that LCMs are not arms but accessories of weaponry, referred to as ‘accoutrements’ in the Founding era,’” a supplemental brief filed with the Supreme Court Monday by the attorneys representing Duncan said, highlighting the different results. “The Third Circuit rebuffed the invitation, rejecting the Ninth Circuit’s view as ‘at odds with the Supreme Court’s instruction in Bruen.’”

Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.