A conservative appeals court ruled Thursday that a longstanding federal ban on handgun sales to people between the ages of 18 and 20 violates the Second Amendment, pushing the question of age limits for handguns one step closer to the Supreme Court.
In a 29-page opinion written by Judge Edith H. Jones, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans concluded that the Constitution “includes 18- to 20-year-old individuals among ‘the people’ whose right to keep and bear arms is protected,” and that a federal law criminalizing the sale of handguns to 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds was therefore unconstitutional.
The ruling overturned gun control laws and regulations that date back to 1968.
In 2022, after 19 children and 12 adults died at the hands of two 18-year-olds armed with military-style rifles in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, the House passed a bill that would have banned licensed gun dealers from selling any firearm to teenagers, trying to align the sale of long guns with the age restrictions on handguns. But that provision was rejected by the Senate.
Now the courts are moving in the other direction, though it was not immediately clear on Thursday how the Fifth Circuit ruling would affect gun sales nationally or in the southern states covered by the appellate court.
The three-judge panel in Louisiana rejected the government’s arguments that firearm sales to this age group had been restricted in similar ways in 18th- and 19th-century America. It cited instead the Militia Act of 1792, which required “every free able-bodied white male” between the ages of 18 and 45 to join his state militia and furnish his own musket or rifle.
The court’s citations of centuries-old state and local gun laws were a consequence of the Bruen standard, named for a 2022 Supreme Court decision rejecting the idea that gun regulations could be legally justified on the basis of their potential to achieve some policy goal, such as preventing fatal shootings.
Instead, the Supreme Court ruled, in a 6-3 decision split by the party of the justices’ nominating president, that gun laws that fall within the Second Amendment’s scope must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” to pass muster.
The Fifth Circuit is considered by many legal experts to be the most conservative appeals court in the country. Since the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling, it has attracted a number of plaintiffs seeking to roll back gun regulations. But when the Fifth Circuit tried to strike down a law criminalizing the possession of guns by people subject to domestic violence restraining orders, it was overruled on appeal by the Supreme Court. In that opinion, the court advised the Fifth Circuit to use Bruen’s “historical tradition” standard with moderation, stating that the requirement was a “historical analog” and not a “historical twin.”
The president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, a gun rights group that sued to overturn the age limit, praised Thursday’s ruling, calling it a “win against an immoral and unconstitutional age-based gun ban.” The legalization of handgun possession by 18- to 20-year-olds has been progressing on other fronts. A ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis struck down Minnesota’s age limit on applying for a permit to carry a handgun in public. Oklahoma is considering legislation that would expand the rights of 18-year-olds to own and carry handguns.
A district court judge in Virginia made a similar ruling on the handgun age limit in 2023, but that decision was stayed pending an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Will the ruling mean that dealers will start immediately selling handguns to younger customers? That will most likely be decided in part by the dealers themselves, said John J. Donohue III, a professor at Stanford Law School and gun policy expert.
“This could essentially mean that tomorrow, some dealers in states that don’t have their own age limits will start selling guns to people in this age group,” he said.
Thursday’s ruling, in combination with the pending Fourth Circuit case, also makes it more likely that the question of possession by those between the ages of 18 and 20 will be taken up by the Supreme Court, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a critic of much of the Fifth Circuit’s jurisprudence.
“Once again, the Fifth Circuit is putting pressure on the justices to take up a dispute they would have rather left alone,” he said.
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