To fully understand this, you have to have been following the Supreme Court gun rulings since 2008. That’s when it started changing.

2008 - D.C. vs. Heller - Handgun ban

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/570/

“Private citizens have the right under the Second Amendment to possess an ordinary type of weapon and use it for lawful, historically established situations such as self-defense in a home, even when there is no relationship to a local militia.”

How this relates to assault weapons, from the ruling:

“the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”

“The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights,[Footnote 27] banning from the home “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,” 478 F. 3d, at 400, would fail constitutional muster.”

2010 - McDonald v. City of Chicago - Handgun ban

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/

Because D.C. is a special district, and not a state, the court ruled 2 years later that, yes, they mean states as well.

“The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment extends the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms to the states, at least for traditional, lawful purposes such as self-defense.”

2016 - Caetano v. Massachusetts

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/577/411/

This is my favorite of the bunch. Woman buys a stun gun to protect against an abusive ex. MA rules that stun guns didn’t exist back in the day, so the 2nd amendment doesn’t apply.

“The Second Amendment covers all weapons that may be defined as “bearable arms,” even if they did not exist when the Bill of Rights was drafted and are not commonly used in warfare.”

2022 - New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen

This is the one that’s causing lower courts to re-consider all their rulings.

On the face of it, it up-ended how New York State assigns concealed carry permits. In order to get a permit, you had to show “special cause” and statements like “I don’t feel safe” or “I want to defend myself” weren’t deemed special enough.

So to start with:

"the “constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need.”

BUT - THE COURT DIDN’T END THERE.

They added this little bon mot for other courts:

“To determine whether a firearm regulation is consistent with the Second Amendment, Heller and McDonald point toward at least two relevant metrics: first, whether modern and historical regulations impose a comparable burden on the right of armed self-defense, and second, whether that regulatory burden is comparably justified. Because “individual self-defense is ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment right,” these two metrics are “ ‘central’ ” considerations when engaging in an analogical inquiry. McDonald, 561 U. S., at 767 (quoting Heller, 554 U. S., at 599).”

So now, all other courts are reviewing the laws with those two bullet points in mind… aaand here we are…