In the Wednesday ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Payne in Richmond issued a 71-page decision declaring the law violates young adults’ Second Amendment rights and is therefore unconstitutional.
Payne noted that adults in that age group can vote, serve in the military and sit on a federal jury. Because of this, he found no basis for federal statutes to prohibit law-abiding young adults from purchasing a weapon.
“If the Court were to exclude 18-to-20-year-olds from the Second Amendment’s protection,” Payne wrote, “it would impose limitations on the Second Amendment that do not exist with other constitutional guarantees.”
Invoking the U.S. Supreme Court’s sweeping Bruen decision last year, Payne continued. “Because the statutes and regulations in question are not consistent with our Nation’s history and tradition, they therefore cannot stand.”
Bruen forcefully established that in making decisions on Second Amendment rights, courts must base their rulings on the nation’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The result of this decision is the successful challenging of unconstitutional laws by gun rights advocates.
Among challenges that resulted in decisions against existing laws are a federal judge’s recent ruling against a Minnesota statute barring 18- to 20-year-olds from acquiring permits to carry handguns in public. Another judge struck down a similar ordinance restricting the carrying of a firearm by young adults in Texas.
Payne further displayed his reliance on the landmark Bruen decision when he specifically referred to the early nation’s legal approach to gun ownership. He declared that the government did not display “any evidence of age-based restrictions on the purchase or sale of firearms from the colonial era, Founding, or Early Republic.”
Because of this, he concluded that the “Founders considered age-based regulations on the purchase of firearms to circumscribe the right to keep and bear arms confirmed by the Second Amendment.”
One of the group of plaintiffs challenging the federal law, 20-year-old John Corey Fraser, had attempted to buy a Glock 19x handgun from a licensed dealer but was prevented from doing so. Fraser was joined by several others in the class action lawsuit.
The filing asserted that the Gun Control Act of 1968 and regulations that followed from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) were unconstitutional. The claim was based on the sweeping effect of these legal measures in keeping all adults under 21 from legally possessing handguns.
Fraser’s attorney, Elliot Harding, expressed his satisfaction with the ruling and belief that it will stand up to appeal.
Harding told the Associated Press that “even though it ensures that future buyers can now purchase these firearms in the federal system — one that includes background checks and other requirements — we expect the defendants will appeal.”
A loophole in the current law, according to Harding, allows adults under 21 to purchase handguns from private sellers while excluding them from buying the same weapons from a federally licensed dealer.
“This allows them to go in and buy a registered firearm, direct from a manufacturer, but they’ll also go through background checks,” he explained. If Payne’s ruling stands, “they have to go through the traditional steps in purchasing a firearm.”
Gun control groups were dismayed by Payne’s decision. Everytown Law claimed the statute is constitutional and necessary to thwart gun violence. Senior director of issues and appeals Janet Carter declared the ruling “will undoubtedly put lives at risk” before adding that “it must be reversed.”
