Age Restrictions on Handgun Sales Are Unconstitutional, a Federal Judge Rules

Since 1968, the federal government has barred firearm dealers from selling handguns to anyone younger than 21. Last week, a federal judge in Virginia said that rule, which applies to federally licensed dealers but does not cover private sales, is unconstitutional because “prohibitions on the rights of 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase handguns are not supported by our Nation’s history and tradition.”

The four plaintiffs in this case, Fraser v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, are all adults younger than 21 who either tried to buy a handgun from a federally licensed dealer or said they would do so if it were allowed. They argued that the law and regulations standing in their way are inconsistent with the Second Amendment.

The government argued that 18-to-20-year-old Americans are not part of “the people” whose “right to keep and bear arms” is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. When that amendment was ratified in 1791, the Justice Department noted, the age of majority was 21.

In granting the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, Robert E. Payne, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, rejected that argument for several reasons. The Supreme Court has said “the people” protected by the Second Amendment, like “the people” protected by the First and Fourth Amendments, “refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community.” The government therefore was arguing that 18-to-20-year-olds, who today can vote and are treated as adults in most other respects, are not part of “the political community.”

The argument that the current meaning of that category is the same as the one that was accepted in the late 18th century, Payne notes in his 71-page opinion, has troubling implications. If the category is defined as people who are qualified to vote, for example, “the political community at the time of the Founding only included white, landed men.”

Since then, “membership in the political community has grown to include numerous groups—women, minorities, and minors—that were denied inclusion at the time of the Founding,” Payne writes. “If the Court were to accept the Government’s position of limiting the definition of ‘the people’ to those understood to fall within it at the time of the Founding, the Second Amendment would exclude protections for vast swaths of the American population who [undoubtedly] are members of the political community today.”

Payne also notes that limiting the Second Amendment to Americans 21 or older would be inconsistent with the way other constitutional rights are applied. “It is firmly established that the rights enshrined in the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eight[h], and Fourteenth Amendments vest before the age of 21,” he writes. “Like these other rights, the Second Amendment’s protections apply to 18-to-20-year-olds.”

The government also argued that the federal age restriction on handgun sales is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”—the constitutional test established by the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. But Payne thought that claim was undermined by the same militia laws that the government cited.

“The historical sources show that, at the time surrounding ratification of the Second Amendment, 16 or 18 was the age of majority for militia service throughout the nation