Judge Strikes Down Age Restriction in 1968 Gun Control Act

Starting with the 1968 Gun Control Act, Congress started placing age restrictions on the purchase of firearms, including requiring a person to be 21 years old to purchase a handgun, while only needing to be 18 years old to purchase a long arm. (Prior to the act, there was no age restrictions and you will often come across stories from that time period of youths purchasing and/or carrying firearms while tweens or young teens). A federal judge in Virginia has struck down the requirement that someone needs to be 21 years old to purchase a handgun as being in violation of the Second Amendment.  Bloomberg Law provides some additional details:

    The right to purchase a handgun falls under right to “keep and bear arms,” and young adults are among “the people” protected by the Second Amendment, Judge Robert E. Payne of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at Richmond said Wednesday.

    Restricting the right of 18-to-20-year-olds to buy handguns, via an interlocking collection of federal law and regulations, isn’t supported by the nation’s history and tradition, Payne said. The government presented numerous militia laws from around the time of the nation’s founding, but they showed that 16 or 18 was the age of militia service then, he said.

    The government did not present any evidence supporting “age-based restrictions on the purchase or sale of firearms from the colonial era, Founding, or Early Republic,” Payne said.

    The earliest age restrictions for buying guns the government pointed to were laws passed in Alabama and Tennessee in 1856, Payne said. But none of the antebellum laws provided a definition of “minor” and “it is unclear to whom exactly they applied,” he said.

    Prohibiting 18-to-20-year-olds from purchasing handguns also isn’t presumptively lawful under the US Supreme Court’s growing Second Amendment precedent, Payne said. Though the Supreme Court allows some restrictions on gun sellers, the prohibition here is a blanket prohibition on buyers, “rather than a mere condition or qualification,” he said.

It also noted that the case is: Fraser v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, 2023 BL 159607, E.D. Va., No. 3:22-CV-00410-REP, 5/10/23.