The Constitutional Case for an Assault Weapons Ban in the Wake of the Tragic Manhattan Mass Shooting

The following piece ran online in the New York Law Journal on August 7, 2025. Reprinted with permission.

Last week, a lone gunman entered an office building in midtown Manhattan and killed four innocent New Yorkers with an AR-15—a weapon designed to give the United States military unprecedented firepower in some of the world’s bloodiest conflicts. 

New York has outlawed assault weapons for decades, as have numerous other states and localities, representing roughly one third of the nation’s population. But, as Gov. Kathy Hochul noted in the wake of the Manhattan shooting, state and local laws “only go so far when an AR-15 can be obtained in a state with weak gun laws and brought into New York to commit mass murder.” 

The shooter purchased his gun in Nevada, which does not prohibit the sale or possession of assault weapons despite the fact that the deadliest mass shooting in modern history, perpetrated with assault weapons, occurred in Las Vegas. To fully address the senseless epidemic of mass shootings, more states must enact these lifesaving laws, and Congress should enact a federal assault weapon ban.

We know these laws save lives. Federal and state assault weapons bans are proven to reduce both the number of mass-shooting incidents and fatalities. From 1990-2023, states with assault weapon bans experienced 60% fewer assault-weapon shootings and 67% fewer assault-weapon deaths than states without similar protections. These states also experienced significantly fewer mass shootings and firearm fatalities overall.  

And make no mistake: there is no constitutional problem with laws prohibiting assault weapons. Federal appellate courts have repeatedly—and without exception—made clear that such laws are compatible with the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court even turned down the gun lobby’s invitation to hear a challenge to Maryland’s ban on assault weapons earlier this summer. Despite this growing consensus in the courts, the gun lobby continues to challenge assault weapon restrictions. 

Gun-rights plaintiffs argue that they have a constitutional right to own these weapons of war. But the Supreme Court has stated that “the Second Amendment is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever,” and stressed that “dangerous and unusual weapons” and “weapons most useful in military service—M-16s and the like—may be banned.”  Following this logic, federal courts applying Supreme Court precedent have made clear that the Second Amendment covers only those weapons “in common use today for self-defense.” Assault weapons plainly are not.

In fact, research shows assault weapons are almost never used in self-defense scenarios. After reviewing the empirical evidence offered by both parties, a federal judge recently credited an expert’s finding—based on a database published by the conservative Heritage Foundation—that rifles of any type were only used in 2-4% of self-defense scenarios, meaning AR-15s and similar assault weapons were used even less frequently. 

Gun lobby-backed challengers in another case could not point to even a “single instance” where an AR-15, or any other assault weapon, had actually been used in self-defense. Even gun owners themselves report that self-defense is not primarily why they buy assault weapons—in a recent survey by the gun industry’s trade association, gun owners ranked self-defense 10th among the reasons for their most recent purchase. 

It’s no surprise that gun owners rarely use assault weapons for lawful self-defense—they are “ill-suited and disproportionate” to that purpose, and better suited to the military context for which they were developed.

For one, they are far more lethal than traditional handguns. One experiment showed that ammunition fired from an AR-15 releases between four and nineteen times more energy into its target than ammunition from a handgun. The results are devastating and often irreparable.

As multiple courts have recognized, AR-15 rounds cause “catastrophic” damage to the human body. These injuries are especially lethal in children. Not a single child struck by a bullet from an assault weapon at Sandy Hook survived.

The presence of an assault weapon in a violent confrontation can also delay police response and emergency medical care. AR-15s can penetrate most body armor, making them “uniquely dangerous” to law enforcement. Despite their rarity relative to handguns, they are responsible for 13-20% of fatal shootings of police officers in the line of duty. With the aid of his assault weapon, the Manhattan shooter overcame building security officers, including an off-duty NYPD officer. 

The four New Yorkers killed last Monday should be alive today. The Constitution’s self-defense guarantee is not a death pact—it allows governments to prohibit weapons like AR-15s, which belong on the battlefield, not in our communities. Congress should follow New York’s lead, and take the lifesaving measure of barring civilian access to these weapons of war.

Reprinted with permission from the August 8, 2025 issue of the New York Law Journal. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. All rights reserved.