Federal Judge Upholds Hawaii’s Ban on Gun and Ammo Sales to Adults Under 21, Citing an 1822 Case That Grouped Pistols With Liquor, Whips and Fiddles

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HONOLULU, HI — A federal judge has upheld Hawaii’s law barring adults 18 to 20 from acquiring firearms and ammunition, ruling that the state’s age-21 minimum fits within the country’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The order in Roache v. Lopez, Civ. No. 24-00496, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii on August 31, 2026, denying the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and granting Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez’s counter motion. Summary judgment means the court decided the case on the written record, without a trial, because it concluded the outcome turned on law rather than disputed facts.

U.S. District Judge Jill Otake, a Donald Trump appointee, did not dispute that 18- to 20-year-olds are part of “the people” the Second Amendment protects, as reported by Courthouse News Service, which also reported the historical sources she relied on and the passages quoted below.

Here is what Hawaii law actually does. Under HRS § 134-2(a), no one acquires a firearm in Hawaii by purchase, gift, inheritance, bequest, or any other means without first getting a permit from their county chief of police. Under § 134-2(d)(1), the chief issues those permits to citizens, nationals, and lawful permanent residents who are 21 or older and not otherwise disqualified. Section 134-2(h) closes the loop from the other direction by barring anyone from selling, giving, lending, or delivering a firearm to a person who cannot lawfully acquire one. Ammunition is covered too: § 134-7(g) generally prohibits people under 21 from owning, possessing, or controlling ammunition, and § 134-7.7 addresses its sale. The exceptions are narrow. Sections 134-4(c) and 134-5(a) and (b) let people under 21 carry and use some firearms for hunting and target shooting, or borrow a rifle or shotgun for 15 days.

Lead plaintiff Juda Roache is a Honolulu resident over 18 and under 21 who says he would apply for a permit and buy his own firearms and ammunition if the law allowed it, and who would also accept a firearm and ammunition as gifts from his mother. He was joined by two business plaintiffs, Aloha Strategics LLC and JGB Arms LLC, and by the Second Amendment Foundation. An earlier plaintiff, Elijah Pinales, was dismissed by stipulation, which is why the case SAF originally announced as Pinales v. Attorney General for the State of Hawaii now carries Roache’s name.

Otake framed the decisive question as whether Hawaii’s age restriction is consistent with the nation’s history of firearm regulation, the test the Supreme Court set out in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In plain terms, under Bruen a state defending a gun law has to point to a comparable tradition of regulation from the relevant historical period, not just argue that the law is a good idea.

She found that tradition in an unexpected place. “The court finds solid evidence in founding era common law that society restricted the practical ability of people under 21 from acquiring goods, including firearms, because of concerns about their judgment and maturity,” Otake wrote. The reasoning runs through old contract law. Under a founding-era doctrine, people under 21 could void contracts for goods beyond basic necessities, and an 1822 South Carolina ruling placed liquor and pistols outside that necessities category, alongside whips and fiddles. Otake also relied on state laws passed in the decades after the Civil War, as cheap mass-produced handguns spread, including an 1875 Indiana law that made it a crime to sell or give anyone under 21 a pistol, dirk, bowie knife, or cartridges made for a pistol.

The plaintiffs argued that 18-year-olds are full-fledged adults today in a way that should change the analysis. Otake rejected that, pointing out that states still restrict people that age from buying alcohol and tobacco. “It would be anomalous to say that a state could not make that same determination now and regulate accordingly,” she wrote.

SAF’s own filing put the history the other way around. In its memo supporting summary judgment, the group argued that “historically no state or colony completely banned the acquisition and possession of firearms by adults under 21,” and that in the modern era Hawaii is the only state that completely bans acquisition and possession of both firearms and ammunition by adults under 21. “Put simply, Hawaii’s laws completely prevent adults under 21 from exercising their Second Amendment rights,” SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said when the motion was filed. SAF founder Alan Gottlieb framed it as a rights-parity problem: “These adults have all the same fundamental rights as those 21 and older, to include those protected by the Second Amendment.”

The gap between those two positions is the whole case, and it is worth being precise about what the court did and did not say. Otake did not hold that 18- to 20-year-olds fall outside the Second Amendment. She held that a state may regulate their acquisition of firearms because the founding generation’s law made it hard for them to buy things generally. That is a broad move. Contract-law disability protected minors from bad bargains; it was not a public-safety prohibition backed by criminal penalties, and it did not stop a 19-year-old from possessing a musket handed to him. Stretching it to support a modern criminal ban on both firearms and ammunition asks a lot of an 1822 case about whips and fiddles.

The practical effect on the ground is worth stating plainly. A 20-year-old in Honolulu cannot buy a handgun, cannot be given one by his mother, and cannot lawfully keep ammunition, outside narrow hunting and target shooting carve-outs. That is not a delay or a waiting period. For those three years, the everyday exercise of the right is off the table, and the ruling now says the Constitution tolerates it.

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One district judge decided this, on cross-motions for summary judgment, and a district court ruling binds the parties in front of it. No appeal has been announced in any source I have. Hawaii’s age-21 requirement remains in force in the meantime.

I will continue tracking Roache v. Lopez as it moves through the courts.