On October 13, the full Third Circuit decided Williams v. Attorney General United States of America, No. 24-1091, a challenge to the lifetime federal firearms ban in 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). The court held the statute unconstitutional as applied to Edward Williams, whose disqualifying record consists of two early-2000s Pennsylvania convictions for driving under the influence. Judge Matey wrote the Opinion of the Court, and the en banc bench divided in several directions on the reasoning. The dangerousness question at the heart of the case deserves its own analysis, which I will give separately.
Williams is not a sensitive-places case. It does not mention New Jersey’s statute, and it decides nothing about where a licensed citizen may carry. What it does contain is a short passage on regulating places, written by the same court that is now deciding Koons v. Attorney General New Jersey and Siegel v. Attorney General New Jersey, Nos. 23-1900 and 23-2043. The inference that follows is my reading, not the court’s holding.
What the Opinion Says About Places
Part II of the opinion sorts firearm regulation into three categories. In the court’s words, “[r]egulations on firearms can be separated into three categories: restrictions on people, places, and things,” citing District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 626-27 (2008). The court then explains why the category matters, and here it borrows directly from the Supreme Court:
“[I]t has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment … codified a pre-existing right.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 592. As a corollary, laws extensively regulating the types of firearms a person can possess and the places where possession is permitted can “eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense.” N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 31 (2022) … The Second Amendment thus recognizes a robust right to bear arms within civil society that can rarely be circumvented by the sovereign. Put simply, things and places cannot be casually conscribed.
The words “eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms” belong to Bruen, and the court says so. The final sentence belongs to the Third Circuit. The court also states that “[r]egulations concerning what types of firearms a person may carry and where a person may carry apply uniformly,” while regulations on who may carry “require an individualized inquiry addressing present threats to the community.”
Why the Framing Matters
Within Williams, the places passage serves as contrast. The court wants to explain why disarming a person demands a particularized showing of present danger, and it does so by distinguishing the rules for places and things, which apply to everyone alike. Nothing in that contrast tells us how the court will treat a particular location.
My point is narrower. The court did not have to write the sentence that places “cannot be casually conscribed.” It chose to place that sentence in the opening pages of an en banc opinion, directly beneath a quotation from Bruen warning that place restrictions can eviscerate the carry right. An appellate court inclined to defer to legislatures does not describe the right as one that “can rarely be circumvented by the sovereign.” A court prepared to accept that most of a state is off limits does not either.
The Personnel Tell Their Own Story
The panel in Koons and Siegel upheld most of New Jersey’s post-Bruen location restrictions by a divided vote in September 2025. The challenged provisions include bans in vehicles, libraries and museums, bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, entertainment venues, and a default rule barring carry on private property open to the public absent the owner’s consent. Judge Porter dissented in part, warning that the panel’s reasoning allowed New Jersey to prohibit carry nearly everywhere ordinary life occurs and wherever people gather, and that the exception for places that are not “sensitive” was left nearly empty. The full court granted rehearing and heard argument this year.
Judge Porter joined Judge Matey’s opinion in Williams, including its places-and-things language. That does not tell us how the full court will vote, and I do not claim it does. It is one data point, but a meaningful one, in a court where each judge’s alignment matters.
My Forecast
I expect the en banc court to strike many of New Jersey’s challenged location provisions, and I expect it to do so soon. My reasoning rests on the doctrine as I have long described it. Government may bar carry in a place only where it supplies comprehensive security of the kind found at an airport checkpoint: screening, armed guards, controlled entry. A state that offers none of that cannot disarm a citizen and leave her defenseless. I set out that argument in “Dangerous, but not Unusual: Mistakes Commonly Made by Courts in Post-Bruen Litigation,” 22 Geo. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y (2024). In November 2021, before Bruen was decided, I predicted that states would respond to a favorable ruling by declaring nearly their whole territory sensitive. That is what New Jersey and New York did.
If the Third Circuit strikes New Jersey’s regime, it will stand in tension with courts that have sustained broad location bans. A circuit split on gun-free zones is the kind of conflict the Supreme Court exists to resolve. My expectation is that the Court takes a sensitive-places case after the AR-15 cases, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, set for argument on December 2. Review could conceivably come this term, but next term is the more realistic bet. These are predictions, and I offer them as such.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.