On August 7, a large coalition of gun rights advocacy groups filed a motion for summary judgment in Padua v. Davenport, a case challenging New Jersey’s outright ban on suppressors. The coalition includes individual plaintiffs and the National Rifle Association, the Second Amendment Foundation, the American Suppressor Association, and Safari Club International, and is led by state groups New Jersey Firearm Owners Syndicate and the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs.
This filing caps a busy week on the issue of the National Firearms Act, where earlier in the week, a Texas district court judgment issued an injunction that rendered a significant portion of the NFA unenforceable as it relates to NFA items that were reduced to a zero dollar tax in the One Big Beautiful Bill, the Trump administration’s 2025 budget act. While a flurry of litigation followed the One Big Beautiful Bill, Padua deals more narrowly with the question of whether suppressors meet the definition of an arm under the Second Amendment and, therefore, whether the state-level ban is constitutional.
“This case is critical for many reasons,” said Joe LoPorto, director of legal operations at NJFOS. “While suppressors are clearly in common use, outright state-level bans on suppressors simply lack common sense. Suppressors do not make firearms more dangerous; they make them safer. But just as important, this issue is the next significant evolution of case law on hardware bans in the US.”
The brief points out that suppressors are legal in 42 states and over 6.5 million suppressors are in the hands of law-abiding Americans. As cited in the brief, there are roughly four times as many suppressors in the U.S. as there are licensed attorneys in the U.S.
Padua now moves to the final stage of the district court level of the case just a few weeks after the Third Circuit Court of Appeals struck down New Jersey’s ban on so-called assault firearms and “large capacity magazines.” The motion for summary judgment cites that Third Circuit precedent throughout. From the brief:
The en banc Third Circuit explicitly considered – and rejected – the argument that a component part of a firearm that may be described an “accessory” or “accoutrements” is not protected by the Second Amendment. The court acknowledged that New Jersey argued “that a large-capacity magazine is an ammunition container that is harmless when it is not attached to a gun… “The State urge[d the Third Circuit] to adopt the Ninth Circuit’s view that LCMs are not arms but accessories of weaponry, referred to as “accoutrements” in the Founding era.” But the Third Circuit declined…
[T]he Court explained, “even where a particular arm does not require the use of a magazine, a magazine unquestionably facilitates the arm user’s ability ‘to cast at or strike another.”‘ Id. (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 581). “Accordingly, magazines are arms.” Id. at *23 (3d Cir. July 17, 2026). The same is true of suppressors.
Last week, the Third Circuit stayed its mandate in the assault weapon and magazine case to allow New Jersey to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. However, the stay in that case does not impact the precedential effect on lower courts unless and until the Supreme Court reverses the decision. While the decision to stay the mandate frustrated many gun owners in the Garden State, an obvious silver lining exists. Lower courts in the Third Circuit have been given a much clearer instruction as to how to view arms bans and the question of accessories or “accoutrement” like magazines as well as a much clearer interpretation of the overall framework laid out in the landmark 2022 decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen.
With the clear shift in the composition of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to a conservative majority, New Jersey has become a hotbed of litigation on the Second Amendment. And while the immediate benefit of the recent ruling on assault weapons and magazine capacity restrictions was delayed temporarily, the upcoming oral arguments and ultimate ruling in the suppressor ban case could be a clear indicator of the broader trajectory of litigation on the issue.
