Guns

Newsweek -   A federal appeals court on Friday struck down New Jersey's decades-old ban on assault weapons, becoming the first federal appellate court in the country to rule that a state prohibition on semiautomatic rifles such as the AR-15 violates the Second Amendment.

The decision from the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to weigh in on the constitutionality of similar state-level assault weapons bans, setting the stage for what could become one of the most consequential Second Amendment rulings in years.