A major pro-gun rights group is pushing the United States District Court for the District of New Jersy for an end to the state’s blanket ban on short-barreled rifles (SBRs).
In the case FPC v. Platkin, the Firearms Policy Coalition on February 18 filed a motion for summary judgment, urging the court to enjoin the?? State’s SBR ban.
In the motion for summary judgment, FPC argues that New Jersey’s short-barreled rifle ban is unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s settled Second Amendment framework.
“New Jersey’s law is not a regulation; it is a categorical ban,” the motion states. “It criminalizes mere possession of a class of rifles based on an arbitrary measurement—turning an otherwise lawful rifle into contraband by a fraction of an inch—and backs that prohibition with years of imprisonment. That is a severe burden on the constitutionally protected right to ‘keep and bear.’”
FPC President Brandon Combs said the ban is a “travesty” that should be done away with once and for all.
“Tyrants in New Jersey have turned the Garden State into a felony factory for peaceable gun owners by criminalizing the right to keep and bear arms,” Combs said in a news releases announcing the action. “That is why we brought this important Second Amendment lawsuit: to put an end to their authoritarian insanity. Our motion today shows exactly why New Jersey’s ban on constitutionally protected firearms cannot survive scrutiny-and why the Court should block enforcement of this ban. We are going to make New Jersey free again, whatever it takes.”
As the motion explains, the SBR law fails to meet the second Bruen criteria of proving a historical precedent.
“There is no Founding Era or Reconstruction Era tradition of banning rifles, let alone by barrel length or overall length,” the brief states. “Short-barreled long guns and functional predecessors existed throughout the relevant periods without categorical prohibition. The first federal barrel-length restriction arrived only in 1934—far too late to establish the ‘well-established and representative’ tradition Bruen demands—and even that line was a tax-driven, compromise accommodation rather than a historically grounded judgment that short rifles can be banned.”
Ultimately, the motion asks the court to declare the ban unconstitutional and force the government to stop enforcing it.
“New Jersey’s categorical ban on short-barreled rifles violates the Second Amendment,” the brief concludes. “SBRs are bearable arms in common use for lawful purposes. The Second Amendment’s text covers them and New Jersey bears the burden of proving a historical tradition of banning them. It cannot. The Court should therefore grant the Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, hold New Jersey’s SBR ban unconstitutional, and award Plaintiffs all of the declaratory, injunctive, and other relief the complaint requests.”
FPC is joined in the case by five individual FPC members, along with High Caliber Ordinance LLC and Louie G’s Outdoors. Plaintiffs are represented by Chad Flores of Flores Law and Bradley Lehman of Whiteford, Taylor & Preston.
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