US ban on gun sales to adults under age 21 is unconstitutional, court rules

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – A decades-old U.S. government ban on federally licensed firearms dealers selling handguns to adults under the age of 21 is unconstitutional, a U.S. appeals court held on Thursday, citing recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings expanding gun rights.

The ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals marked the first time a federal appeals court has held that the prohibition violated the right to keep and bear arms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

The appeals court had previously upheld that same ban in 2012. But that was before the 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling in 2022 that established a new test for assessing modern firearms laws.

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court held that modern gun restrictions were required to be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

The federal ban on sales to people under 21 was first adopted by Congress in 1968 as part of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act.

A group of individuals between the ages of 18 and 20 along with the gun rights groups the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Second Amendment Foundation challenged the ban in 2020 and was appealing a lower-court judge’s decision upholding the statutes.

U.S. Circuit Judge Edith Jones, writing for Thursday’s three-judge panel, said that decision was wrong, as the statutes were “unconstitutional in light of our Nation’s historic tradition of firearm regulation.”

The U.S. Department of Justice during Democratic former President Joe Biden’s tenure had defended the ban. But Jones said it put forth “scant” evidence to show that the gun rights of adults ages 18 to 20 were similarly restricted during the nation’s founding era in the 1700s.

“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,” wrote Jones, who like the other panel members was appointed by a Republican president.

Brandon Combs, the Firearms Policy Coalition’s president, in a statement called the ruling a victory against “an immoral and unconstitutional age-based gun ban.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Diane Craft)