Court Rules Against Machine Gun Rights
PHOTO CAPTION: Federal prosecutors submitted this image as evidence showing an MKE Z5P 9mm firearm seized during the investigation of Navy veteran Joseph Paul Berger. (U.S. Attorney’s Office / U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania)
A federal appeals court has ruled that the Second Amendment does not protect the possession of machine guns, rejecting a challenge brought by a decorated Navy veteran convicted after federal agents found 13 fully automatic firearms and about a dozen unregistered suppressors in his Pennsylvania home.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued the decision Sept. 1 in the case of Joseph Paul Berger, affirming his conviction and 37-month prison sentence. The ruling also upheld the federal requirement that suppressors be registered under the National Firearms Act.
Berger's case began after federal agents intercepted a package containing three suppressors shipped from China to the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, home he shared with his father. Investigators obtained a search warrant and ultimately discovered more than five dozen firearms in the residence.
Thirteen of those weapons were fully automatic, most of them AK-pattern rifles, according to the court. Investigators also recovered approximately 12 suppressors and evidence that semiautomatic firearms had been modified using parts capable of converting them to automatic fire.
Berger later pleaded guilty to possessing a machine gun and an unregistered suppressor while reserving his right to challenge the firearms laws under the Second Amendment.
His appeal forced the Third Circuit to address two separate questions: whether the Constitution protects possession of a machine gun and whether requiring suppressor owners to register the devices violates the right to keep and bear arms.
On machine guns, the court ruled against Berger.
The judges acknowledged that machine guns fall within the broad textual category of “arms,” but concluded that the federal government can prohibit their possession because they are not commonly used for lawful purposes and fall within the historical category of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”
The court pointed to the Supreme Court's decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, both of which recognized limits on the types of weapons protected by the Second Amendment.
The panel concluded that automatic weapons differ from firearms commonly kept for self-defense, emphasizing their rate of fire and historical association with military and criminal use.
The court separately rejected Berger's challenge to the National Firearms Act's suppressor-registration requirements.
Federal law does not generally prohibit civilians from possessing suppressors. Berger's conviction involved possessing suppressors that had not been registered as required by the NFA.
The Third Circuit said that registration, identification and background-check requirements impose a limited and objective burden rather than preventing law-abiding people from owning suppressors. The majority therefore concluded that the registration requirement did not infringe Berger's Second Amendment rights as applied in his case.
One judge declined to join part of the majority's reasoning on suppressors but agreed with the ultimate judgment.
Berger and his father were originally charged in 2022 after investigators recovered the firearms from their home. Prosecutors said the 13 machine guns included 11 rifles and two submachine guns.
Joseph Paul Berger was sentenced in June 2024 to 37 months in federal prison. His father, Joseph Raymond Berger, received three years of supervised release.
The new appellate decision leaves those convictions intact while adding another federal appeals court ruling to the rapidly developing legal fight over which weapons and firearm regulations fall within the Second Amendment after Bruen.
For gun owners, the most consequential part of the ruling may extend beyond Berger himself: the Third Circuit has now explicitly held that machine guns can be prohibited even under the Supreme Court's modern Second Amendment framework, while also approving federal registration requirements for suppressors.
(Source: OAF Nation)
