From The Trace:

Writing for the 10-4 majority, Judge Robert King of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, said that the landmark Heller v. District of Columbia decision rendered in 2008 explicitly allows governments to regulate firearms similar in design and function to those issued to members of the military.

The decision marks the fifth time that a federal appeals court has upheld a state assault weapons law, but it goes further than those previous decisions. It is the first to exclude AR-15s and other similar guns from Second Amendment protection on the grounds that they are virtually indistinguishable from weapons of war. The court found that such designation overrides considerations of the common usage or suitability for home self-defense of a gun like the AR-15.

The judges in this case are choosing to be willfully ignorant of the weapons used at the time of the Constitution. There was no difference between arms used in the military/militia and those used for hunting or self defense. Townships had their own armories stocked with cannons (the equivalent of modern artillery). Their argument that the lethality of the weapons disqualifies the weapons is exactly what you would expect from elites in positions of power. They fear the power that the people would wield if allowed to keep and bear such weapons. On another point I would like to know how many of these judges have ever shot or held a gun, let alone own one.