New Jersey got slapped down by the Third Circuit, and the majority opinion was written by a Biden-nominated judge. They can’t even blame Trump or the NRA for that one.
The thing is, I think anti-gun lawmakers secretly enjoyed it. I think they liked being smacked down to some degree, like they’re really into humiliation or something.
Why? Because they seemed to respond to it by dusting off a previous mandatory storage bill that would be smacked down just as hard.
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.
As author Mark W. Smith—also of Four Boxes Diner on YouTube and a Second Amendment attorney—goes on to note, Heller already addressed this. In fact, the law challenged in Heller was almost identical to the proposed New Jersey measure. It also required the gun to be stored in a manner where it could not be used for self-defense purposes, and while I seem to recall the DC law required the gun to be disassembled, one could argue that requiring ammunition to be stored separately is a form of “disassembled” since the gun is just as useless.
And even if you didn’t make that argument, Smith quotes Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion: “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.”
Unloaded is inoperable. It’s as simple as that.
When you also consider that the Bruen standard simply won’t be met by any measure that not just mandates storage of firearms, but for ammunition to be stored completely separate from the weapon itself. Good luck finding a historic analog for that one that applies to the individual and not some company or governmental entity.
This is why I’m starting to think that anti-gunners aren’t so much about gun control, but being humiliated in court. They get their kicks that way.
Why else are they pushing stuff the Supreme Court has already struck down?
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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