Oral Argument on AR-15 Ban Centers on Self-Defense, Hunting

The First Circuit on Monday weighing Massachusetts’s ban on AR-15s pressed the government on its devaluing of the popular gun’s self-defensive value and questioned the Second Amendment’s reach to hunting firearms.

Running uphill against the court’s prior rulings upholding Massachusetts’ assault rifle ban and Rhode Island’s large capacity magazines ban, gun shop owner Gino Mario Recchia III aimed to convince the three-judge panel that those rulings failed to consider that the founders would have valued firepower that would have been of value to persons standing up to a tyrannical government.

The state’s position is that AR-15s are disproportionately used for ...