The 5th Circuit Says the Federal Ban on Handgun Sales to Young Adults Is Unconstitutional
The federal ban on handgun sales to adults younger than 21 violates the Second Amendment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled today. That law is “unconstitutional in light of our Nation’s historic tradition of firearm regulation,” a three-judge panel unanimously concluded in Reese v. ATF.
“Today’s ruling is yet another critical FPC win against an immoral and unconstitutional age-based gun ban,” said Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), which challenged the law along with two would-be handgun buyers and two other gun rights groups. “We look forward to restoring the Second Amendment rights of all peaceable adults throughout the United States.”
Under 18 USC 922(b)(1), a provision that was included in the Gun Control Act of 1968, a federally licensed firearm dealer may not sell handguns to “any individual who the licensee knows or has reasonable cause to believe is less than twenty-one years of age.” The 5th Circuit upheld that restriction in 2012, but that was a decade before the Supreme Court clarified the constitutional test for gun control laws in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
Under Bruen, the government has the burden of demonstrating that a law restricting conduct covered by “the Second Amendment’s plain text” is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” The 5th Circuit concluded that the government’s defense of Section 922(b)(1) failed that test.
The government’s lawyers argued that 18-to-20-year-olds are not part of “the people” whose “right to keep and bear arms” is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. They cited “the common law’s recognition of 21 years as the date of legal maturity at the time of the founding” and “the fact that legislatures
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