A federal judge on Aug. 7 temporarily blocked a new gun control law that was set to take effect in Colorado.
The law in question prohibits adults younger than 21 from buying firearms and gun sellers from selling firearms to people younger than 21. People who violate the law face misdemeanors.
The Rocky Mountain Gun Owners group, which had petitioned for the injunction, celebrated Judge Brimmer’s ruling.
“Since the day this legislation was introduced, we knew it was unconstitutional,” Taylor Rhodes, executive director of the group, said in a statement.
“We won’t stop fighting until every single unconstitutional anti-gun law is struck down,” Mr. Rhodes added.
A spokesman for Mr. Polis, a Democrat, told news outlets in a statement that the law was aimed at closing a “loophole” that allowed Colorado residents aged 18 to 20 to buy firearms.
“The governor hopes that the courts agree with him that the law is fully consistent with our Second Amendment rights,” the spokesman said.
Colorado legislators approved Senate Bill 23-169, which was then signed by Mr. Polis in April. The bill amended state law to make it illegal for people under 21 to buy a gun and for sellers to sell a firearm to people under 21.
The amendment was set to take effect on Aug. 8.
Rocky Mountain Gun Owners was joined in the lawsuit by several adults who are younger than 21 who said they want to buy guns for self-defense.
‘The People’
The U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment states that “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.”Colorado officials, in defending the law, claimed that “the people” do not include 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds in part because they were considered minors under Colorado law at the time the Second Amendment was adopted. Lawyers for the plaintiffs asserted “the people” includes all Americans and that the amendment protects them because 18- to 20-year-olds were required to serve in militias in the 1700s.
“The Court is persuaded by the reasoning in Range and McCraw that an interpretation of ’the people' in the Second Amendment should begin with the assumption that every American is included,” Judge Brimmer, an appointee of former president George W. Bush, said in his ruling.
The judge also said that the governor has not shown that the law fits into the “historical tradition of firearm regulation,” which is required under the Supreme Court ruling. Plaintiffs had said in their complaint that “there were no state laws governing the possession or purchase of firearms by minors prior to 1791,” when the Second Amendment was adopted. The governor had, in response, pointed to various state laws approved after the Second Amendment was adopted, but Judge Brimmer said he gave “little weight” to laws passed in the intervening period of time.
The plaintiffs also showed that the Second Amendment covers their conduct, the judge said.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment covers carrying handguns in public for self-defense and possessing a gun in the home for self-defense. Mr. Polis tried avoiding those decisions by arguing that the rulings don’t give the adult plaintiffs the right to purchase firearms, while the plaintiffs said the right to possess guns implicitly includes the right to buy them.
“The Court agrees with the Individual Plaintiffs that the Second Amendment includes the right to acquire firearms and, therefore, protects the Individual Plaintiffs’ proposed conduct,” Judge Brimmer said. The law likely violates plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, he added later.
The ruling also concluded the plaintiffs face irreparable harm absent an injunction because they would face punishment if they went to buy guns. Mr. Polis had argued plaintiffs could buy guns before the law went into effect. Judge Brimmer said that even a temporary loss of constitutional freedoms constitutes irreparable injury, pointing to a previous Supreme Court ruling.
