Posted on Friday, January 31, 2025
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by Outside Contributor
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3 Comments
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A federal appeals court on Thursday struck down a handgun ban on adults under the age of 21, ruling that the current age-based restriction violated the right to keep and bear arms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.
The ruling is the latest since the Supreme Court established a new test for assessing modern firearms laws in 2022. The conservative-led Supreme Court determined in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, that current gun restrictions were required to be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that 18- 20-year-olds are among those whose “right to keep and bear arms is protected.”
“The federal government has presented scant evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds’ firearm rights during the founding-era were restricted in a similar manner to the contemporary federal handgun purchase ban, and its 19th-century evidence ‘cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence,’” the judges wrote in their decision, per CNN.
The ruling is in response to a federal ban on handgun sales to people under 21, which was first adopted by Congress in 1968 as part of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, Reuters reported.
The law was challenged by a group of 18- to 20-year-olds and the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Second Amendment Foundation. The appeals court overturned a lower court judge’s ruling that upheld the federal statutes.
Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News.
Reprinted with Permission from Just The News – By Misty Severi
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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