Was the Bowie Knife the AR-15 of the 19th Century?

According to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, yes indeed. And now the state of New Jersey is essentially making the same argument in a supplemental brief filed in the Third Circuit in a lawsuit challenging the state’s ban on so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines. 

The appellate court requested the briefs from the plaintiffs and defendants in light of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Hemani and Wolford. Neither of those cases is particularly helpful to New Jersey’s defense of its gun and magazine ban, and New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport basically uses them as contrast to the Court’s decision in Rahimi, which drew broad analogies between 19th century surety laws and a general tradition of regulating “dangerous individuals” to declare that a modern statute disarming those subject to a domestic violence restraining order passes constitutional muster.

Davenport contends that the problem New Jersey is trying to address really didn’t exist at the time of the Founding or the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, so the Third Circuit should allow the state to “identify historical principles at a higher level of generality” in defending the ban. 

That brings us to Davenport’s citation of 19th century laws regulating Bowie knives, “where legislatures responded to the proliferation of Bowie knives and their contributions to dueling with myriad restrictions including on possession while still leaving nearly all self-defense tools available.” 

And so it covers laws for assault weapons and LCMs that “enabled mass shootings to a degree impossible with Founding or Reconstruction era weapons,” while leaving other firearms available. By looking to the principles rather than demanding a perfect match, legislatures still have the breathing room to respond to solve “distinctively modern” threats like mass shootings or domestic violence. History thus avoids becoming a “straightjacket.” 

In short, Wolford and Hemani, building on Rahimi, make clear this Court is charged with identifying historical principles—not perfect historical matches—that allow legislatures to address evolving problems today. Given the strength of New Jersey’s historical and evidentiary record, the cases confirm that legislatures can limit evolving weapons that cause unusual, disproportionate public-safety threats, including by restricting the evolving technologies— like AR-15s and LCMs—that enable the modern crisis of mass shootings. Said another way, the People have long been free to use the democratic process to protect themselves from such unusually dangerous weapons. Wolford, Hemani, and Rahimi collectively confirm that this Court should join its six sister circuits—including a ruling yesterday in Barnett v. Raoul, 2026 WL 1982951 (7th Cir. July 9,2026)—and hold that New Jersey’s assault weapons and LCM laws are simply another iteration of that long tradition.

In a way, this is progress. New Jersey is no longer contending that the guns and magazines they’re trying to ban aren’t “arms” protected by the Second Amendment, an argument that was foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s statement in Wolford that arms are essentially any weapon used for offense or defense. 

Now, New Jersey is forced to look for historical analogies to justify its ban, and because there really are no close fits, Davenport has to argue that even loose fits are acceptable because New Jersey is responding to “unprecedented societal concerns” like mass shootings. 

Davenport’s biggest problem doesn’t come from Rahimi, Wolford, or Hemani. It comes from Heller, where the majority held:

It is no answer to say, as petitioners do, that it is permissible to ban the possession of handguns so long as the possession of other firearms (i.e., long guns) is allowed. It is enough to note, as we have observed, that the American people have considered the handgun to be the quintessential self-defense weapon. There are many reasons that a citizen may prefer a handgun for home defense: It is easier to store in a location that is readily accessible in an emergency; it cannot easily be redirected or wrestled away by an attacker; it is easier to use for those without the upper-body strength to lift and aim a long gun; it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police. Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.

Handguns are also the most popular weapon chosen by criminals, but the Supreme Court made it clear in Heller that so long as the American people are commonly using handguns for lawful purposes including self-defense, they cannot be banned, even if other firearms are allowed. 

The same principle applies here. So-called assault weapons are used far less frequently in crimes than handguns, and even the majority of mass shootings involve handguns, not long guns. AR-15s and “large capacity” magazines, on the other hand, are incredibly popular among lawful gun owners, who use them for a variety of lawful purposes including hunting, self-defense, and recreational shooting. It is enough to note, to paraphrase Scalia, that the American people have considered the AR-15 to be the quintessential long gun of our modern era… and a complete prohibition on their use is invalid. 

The plaintiffs argue as much in their own supplemental brief to the Third Circuit.

[W]hen it comes to historical tradition, much of New Jersey’s defense depends on exactly the kind of high-level-of-generality analogizing that Wolford and Hemani emphatically rejected. New Jersey has argued, for example, that this Nation’s historical tradition is one of deferring to state legislatures on whether certain arms are just too dangerous in the wrong hands to allow law-abiding citizens to keep them. It was the dissent in Wolford, however, that condoned deference to “the will of legislatures.” The majority, on the other hand, reasoned that “local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate the meaning of fundamental Bill of Rights guarantees that apply to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.”

… In any event, New Jersey conducts its historical analysis “at too high a level of generality.” Instead of examining how and why historical laws operated, the state tries to extrapolate from a hodge-podge of demonstrably distinguishable laws exceedingly high-level abstractions, like the notion that states may ban firearms “that have spread in society and pose[] extreme safety threats,” are “particularly dangerous,” or are “used in crime. Once one actually examines the laws it has to offer, however, “[t]he gap between the State’s … analogues and [New Jersey’s] rule is just too wide.”

… Laws restricting the storage of gunpowder, use of trap guns, and concealed carry of Bowie knives, clubs, slungshots, and pistols self-evidently “operated in different ways” than New Jersey’s all-out ban on a host of rifles, shotguns, pistols, and magazines. And the machine gun laws the state invokes just prove that the real historical tradition in this Nation is one of restricting access only to “dangerous and unusual” arms, not those commonly kept and carried for lawful purposes. Because New Jersey’s “contemporary law” does not in any way “mirror[] a well-established historical analogue in purpose and operation,” it cannot pass muster.

Now that the supplemental briefs have been submitted, the Third Circuit should issue its opinion pretty quickly. Of course, the appellate court doesn’t operate with any kind of deadline, and it could even decide to hold its opinion until the Supreme Court issues its decision in the Cook County and Connecticut gun ban cases next term. The Seventh Circuit declined to do with the Illinois gun and magazine ban case it decided on Thursday, though, and I expect that the Third Circuit will do the same, if only to flesh out the views of the lower courts before SCOTUS addresses the issue. 

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.

Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.