Appeals Court Revives Colorado Law Banning 18- to 20-Year-Olds From Buying Guns

Guns are displayed for sale at a store in Colorado Springs, Colo., in a file photograph. Brennan Linsley/AP Photo

A Colorado law that bars adults younger than 21 from buying and selling guns is allowed because it does not violate the U.S. Constitution, a trio of federal judges said on Nov. 5.

Age limits on gun purchases are widely imposed across the country and do not implicate the Constitution’s Second Amendment, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard E. N. Federico wrote for the panel that was assigned the case.

The law “is presumptively lawful as a law that imposes conditions or qualifications upon the sale and purchase of arms and thus does not fall within the protections of the plain text of the Second Amendment,” he said.

Under a test established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 in a case known as Bruen, judges analyzing whether gun laws are constitutional must first determine whether the laws regulate conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s “plain text.”

If a law does not cover such conduct, judges do not proceed to the second step established by the nation’s top court.

The Second Amendment states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The plaintiff who brought the case had demonstrated that 18- to 20-year-olds fall within “the people” and the guns he wants to buy are “arms,” the appeals court said. But he failed to prove that the law “implicates his right to ‘keep and bear’ arms,” which is the third prong of the first step, Federico said.

“Laws or regulations imposing conditions or qualifications—such as a minimum purchase age of 21—on the commercial sale or purchase of arms, when not employed for abusive ends, remain outside the scope of the Amendment’s protections under the third prong of Bruen step one,” the judge said.

The panel remanded the case back to U.S. District Judge Philip A. Brimmer with instructions to dissolve an injunction Brimmer entered against the law in 2023, months after it was signed.

Brimmer had said the law did regulate conduct covered by the Second Amendment and found Colorado Gov. Jared Polis failed Bruen’s second step, which is showing a regulation is consistent with the nation’s history of firearm restrictions.

“Colonial laws that disarmed persons who presented a risk of danger to the state or to the country are not analogous to a categorical ban on a segment of society that has not professed hostility to the state or to the nation. And any such analogy would be ‘far too broad.'” he wrote at the time. “Thus, the Court finds that the Governor has not identified founding era gun laws that are analogous to SB23-169.”