Federal Ban on Handgun Sales to Adults Under 21 Violates Constitution, Court Rules

A selection of pistols at a gun shop in Kittery, Maine, on Aug. 9. Charles Krupa/AP Photo

A federal appeals court ruled Jan. 30 that a decades-old government prohibition of handgun sales by licensed firearm dealers to adults under 21 is unconstitutional in light of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that set a higher bar for restricting Second Amendment rights.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a law barring federally licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to those adults violates the Second Amendment due to the law’s incompatibility with two Supreme Court rulings known as “Bruen” and “Rahimi.”

In the Bruen decision, the Supreme Court held that a firearm regulation is unconstitutional unless the government can show that it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition, while the Rahimi ruling largely reinforced and refined the Bruen standard for weighing restrictions to the constitutional right to bear arms.

Citing the two decisions and their implications for gun owners, the Fifth Circuit reversed a district court’s prior ruling that had upheld the ban and ordered the lower court to revise its opinion consistent with the finding of unconstitutionality.

“[The ban is] unconstitutional in light of our nation’s historic tradition of firearm regulation,” the Fifth Circuit judges wrote in their ruling. “We reverse the district court’s judgment and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

Key to the Fifth Circuit’s analysis was considering if the text of the Second Amendment includes adults under 21 as among “the people” who have the right to bear arms. A further critical factor in light of the Bruen decision was whether there was historical tradition of restricting firearm sales to those individuals in a way similar to the contemporary ban.

The government’s position was that the limited ban was not an infringement on Second Amendment rights and that the young-adult age group was not among “the people” protected by those rights.

“We reject these points,” the Fifth Circuit judges wrote, noting that the government had provided “scant evidence” that the firearm rights of adults under 21 was similarly restricted during the founding era.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which was the defendant in the case as it is the federal agency responsible for enforcing the challenged laws, did not respond to a request for comment.

One of the plaintiffs in the case, the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), praised the decision.

“Today’s ruling is yet another critical FPC win against an immoral and unconstitutional age-based gun ban,“ FPC President Brandon Combs said in a statement. ”We look forward to restoring the Second Amendment rights of all peaceable adults throughout the United States.”

The federal restriction on firearm sales to individuals under 21 was initially enacted by Congress in 1968 as part of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act.