Prohibiting 18-to-20-year-olds from purchasing handguns at licensed retailers is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court has ruled.
A unanimous three-judge panel for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday struck down a combination of federal statutes that restrict licensed firearm dealers from selling pistols to young adults. The panel found that the prohibitory regime violates the Second Amendment.
“In sum, 18 U.S.C. §§ 992(b)(1), (c)(1) and their attendant regulations are unconstitutional in light of our Nation’s historic tradition of firearm regulation,” Judge Jones wrote in Reese v. ATF.
The ruling is a victory for gun-rights advocates. It marks the first time that an appeals court has struck down the federal handgun purchase ban since the Supreme Court altered the test courts must use to evaluate modern gun laws in 2022’s New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. It comes as appellate courts across the country have increasingly called into question gun laws that place greater burdens on younger adults than their older peers, with some exceptions.
While state age limits vary, federal law generally allows 18-to-20-year-olds to possess rifles and shotguns and purchase them from federally-licensed retail gun dealers. However, those same young adults may only purchase handguns through private sales. The Gun Control Act (GCA) and subsequent ATF regulations collectively require that individuals be at least 21 years old to purchase handguns from a licensed dealer.
The Fifth Circuit panel found that this legal distinction implicates the plain text of the Second Amendment.
“The government argues that a limited ban on the purchase of handguns from FFLs is not an infringement on the Second Amendment rights, and in any event eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds are not among ‘the people’ protected by the right,” Jones wrote. “We reject these points, then move to Bruen’s second inquiry: government met its burden to demonstrate historical analogues supporting the challenged regulations.”
The panel also noted that the government was at a distinct disadvantage in its need to offer possible historical support for the modern-day restriction. That’s because the 1792 Militia Act required eighteen-year-olds to enroll in the militia and bring their own weapons to militia service. Judge Jones said the government would have to “overcome this clear and germane evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds enjoyed the same Second Amendment rights as their twenty-one-year-old peers at the founding” to prevail.
The government pointed to more than a dozen mid-to-late-19th century state laws that restricted firearm ownership based on age. It also cited a handful of Founding-era resolutions and statutes that prohibited weapons on college campuses or required parents to provide firearms for their sons’ militia service. The panel, however, said that approach “invert[ed] historical analysis” because it provided matching analogues that dated too far from the Founding, while its earlier analogues were not “relevently similar” to the modern ban.
“The federal government has presented scant evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds’ firearm rights during the founding-era were restricted in a similar manner to the contemporary federal handgun purchase ban, and its 19th-century evidence “cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence,'” Jones concluded.
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), a gun-rights organization that helped challenge the federal law, cheered the decision.
“Today the Fifth Circuit reaffirmed what prior courts and common sense tell us: ‘that the right to keep and bear arms surely implies the ability to purchase them,’” Adam Kraut, the group’s executive director, said in a statement. “Adults 18-20 years old are indisputably part of the People, whose rights under the Constitution are no less than their father’s or their grandfather’s.”
The ruling could create added pressure for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the extent to which young adults have Second Amendment protections as decisions continue to pile up. Just hours before the Fifth Circuit issued its opinion Thursday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in a separate lawsuit challenging the same federal prohibition on handgun sales to young adults. Meanwhile, the government of Minnesota has already asked the high court to review an Eighth Circuit ruling striking down the state’s practice of restricting concealed carry permits to residents 21 and older.
The Fifth Circuit remanded Reese back down to the distinct court for a final ruling, which should come in the next few weeks unless the government files an appeal.
