A panel of judges at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a unanimous ruling, found that the federal ban on federal firearms licensees (FFLs) selling handguns to 18-to-20-year-old adults violates the Second Amendment.
In this ruling, the court noted that 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.’” This panel of judges rejected this claim. The court next considered whether the government met its burden of historical analogues (under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen decision). The court then found that the government had not found historical precedents to make this ban constitutional.
The NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) reported, “Since the plain text covers the purchase of handguns by 18-to-20-year-olds, the court next considered whether the federal prohibition is consistent with America’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The court concluded that it is not. During the founding era, as noted above, 18-to-20-year-olds were required to acquire and possess firearms. And no founding-era law forbade them from doing so. Rather, regulations limiting the ability of 18-to-20-year-olds to acquire arms were first enacted in the latter half of the nineteenth century, which is too late to establish a historical tradition. Therefore, the court held, the federal laws prohibiting FFL sales to 18-to-20-year-olds violate the Second Amendment.”
The court cited law review articles published by ILA’s Director of Litigation Counsel and America's 1st Freedom contributor, Joseph Greenlee—which were coauthored with fellow America's 1st Freedom contributor David Kopel—five times in determining that 18-to-20-year-olds are among “the people” and were protected by the Second Amendment at the time of our nation’s founding.
