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BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (AP) — A U.S. appeals court on Thursday ruled against a federal law requiring young adults to be 21 to buy handguns, finding it violated the Second Amendment.
The ruling, handed down by a panel of three judges on the conservative U.S. 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, comes amid major shifts in the national firearm legal landscape following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that expanded gun rights in 2022.
The court found that people aged 18-to-20 should not be prohibited from buying guns.
“Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among ‘the people’ whose right to keep and bear arms is protected,” the court wrote in their ruling. The ruling sends the case back to a lower court judge.
In the past, the appeals court has upheld the age restriction. However, since the Supreme Court's ruling that said firearm restrictions must be rooted in the nation’s historical traditions, judges in states like Minnesota, Virginia and Texas have struck down similar laws.
The Biden administration had fought those rulings. It is uncertain exactly how the Trump administration might proceed, but he told an NRA audience during last year’s campaign that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms.”
The Supreme Court, meanwhile, decided to keep a federal gun law on the books last year. The high court overturned a different ruling from the 5th Circuit and upheld a law intended to protect victims of domestic violence.
Those challenging the ban included the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Louisiana Shooting Association. “If we can trust young adults to defend our country, we can certainly trust them to own any and all legal firearms,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation
Federal law requires a person to be 21 to purchase a handgun from a licensed firearm dealer and 18 to buy a long gun from a dealer, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. There is an 18-year-old minimum for handgun purchases from unlicensed sellers and no minimum age for long guns, according to the group’s research.
The Giffords Law Center called the decision reckless and said age restrictions help prevent violence. “We hope the current law will be ultimately upheld,” legal director David Pucino said.
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Whitehurst reported from Washington.
