Gun control activists had big plans for state-level semi-auto bans this year, but so far they’ve largely been stymied in their efforts to prohibit the sale of most semi-automatic long guns. In Colorado, for example, SB 3 was watered down to become a “permit-to-purchase” measure that, while still an egregious violation of our Second Amendment rights, allows for the purchase of modern sporting rifles so long as residents obtain training and a permission slip from their county sheriff. In Hawaii and New Mexico, gun ban bills have either been defeated outright or left to gather dust in committee, but there’s still at least one legislature still considering a ban.

The Rhode Island Senate Judiciary Committee is set to hear testimony on the Assault Weapons Ban Act of 2025, which would prohibit the sale, manufacture, and possession of all gas-operated semi-automatic long guns that can accept a detachable magazine. While current owners would be grandfathered in so long as they registered their guns with the state, the legislation would still make some of the most popular and commonly owned rifles off-limits to residents in the future. 

Gun owners and Second Amendment advocates are expected to be out in force at the statehouse today in the hopes of derailing the legislation.

Ahead of today’s hearing, Senate Minority Leader Jessica de la Cruz, a critic of the bill, will join a group of gun owners and Second Amendment Supporters for a press conference.

The assault weapons ban is not the only gun-related bill the committee will consider Wednesday afternoon.

Senator de la Cruz has also introduced a bill that would allow legally certified gun owners the right to sue a business or organization for not allowing them to bring a gun inside.

Senator de la Cruz’s press conference is at 1 p.m. at the state house library.

The senate judiciary committee hearings on the ban and other bills is at 2 p.m.

The idea that current owners of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns will be able to keep ahold of theirs has been greeted with a great amount of skepticism, and for good reason. Rhode Island already bans the possession of “large capacity” magazines, and there is no grandfather clause attached to that statute, so there’s legitimate concern that if the gun ban bill becomes law any sort of grandfather clause for the firearms themselves will be short-lived and removed in a future session.

Thousands of gun owners turned out at the state capitol building earlier this year when the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the House version of the gun ban bill, and hopefully turnout will be equally as strong today. With a majority of both House and Senate members co-sponsors of the gun ban bills, however, gun control activists are increasingly confident that they can get the bill to Gov. Daniel McKee, who’s already vowed to sign it into law. 

If Rhode Island lawmakers do end up adopting the sweeping language of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2025, the law will face an immediate court challenge. The First Circuit Court of Appeals, however, recently declined to issue an injunction against an “assault weapon” ban in Massachusetts, declaring that the prohibition likely doesn’t violate our right to keep and bear arms. 

Back in 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a state can’t ban guns unless the ban is “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

A year ago, the First Circuit ruled that a Rhode Island ban on large-capacity magazines appeared to pass this test, concluding that “our historical tradition of regulating arms used for self-defense has tolerated burdens on the right that are certainly no less than the (at most) negligible burden of having to use more than one magazine to fire more than ten shots.”

The court now suggests that the same is true for assault weapons, or at least the plaintiffs didn’t make enough of a showing to justify a preliminary injunction.

For one thing, the weapons are in fact highly dangerous, said Judge Gary Katzmann of the U.S. Court of International Trade, who was sitting by designation.

Even without large-capacity magazines, “semi-automatic rifles cause an average of 40 percent more deaths and injuries in mass shootings than regular firearms,” he wrote.

Historically, “states have routinely regulated, and sometimes outright banned, specific weapons once it became clear that they posed a unique danger to public safety,” he said, including gunpowder, trap guns, Bowie knives and sawed-off shotguns.

Katzmann, a Barack Obama appointee, also said the argument that Americans need AR-15s for self-defense was misplaced.

The Massachusetts ban “does not impose a heavy burden on civilian self-defense,” he wrote. “For one thing, appellants do not demonstrate a single instance where the AR-15 — or any other banned weapon — has actually been used in a self-defense scenario.”

Semi-automatic long guns are used in a small fraction of crimes compared to handguns, and contrary to the First Circuit’s opinion the Second Amendment doesn’t just protect firearms used for self-defense. Instead, the Supreme Court has said that arms that are in common use for lawful purposes (including, but not limited to, self-defense) fall under the umbrella of the Second Amendment’s protections. 

SCOTUS has yet to explicitly declare that bans on semi-automatic long guns are unconstitutional, however, and until that day comes anti-gun Democrats and their allies in the gun control lobby are going to continue in their efforts to ban their sale and possession. Rhode Island may be their best opportunity at the moment, but we know they won’t stop there.