Via The Truth About Guns by Mark Chesnut
In the ongoing battle to recognize the Second Amendment rights of young adults, Americans aged 18, 19, and 20 years old were recently handed another devastating loss.
On June 18, a three-judge panel of the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the law prohibiting the sale of handguns to adults under age 21 to be constitutional under the Second Amendment.
“From English common law to America’s founding and beyond, our regulatory tradition has permitted restrictions on the sale of firearms to individuals under the age of 21,” U.S. Circuit Judge Harvie Wilkinson wrote in the majority opinion.
The ruling overturns the judgments of lower courts in both Virginia and West Virginia, which were granted to the group of six young men who filed the class-action lawsuit. The lower courts found the provision of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 that bans young adults from purchasing handguns violated Second Amendment protections.
In his concurring opinion, U.S. Circuit Judge Toby Heytens made a ludicrous argument that should have gotten him laughed out of the courtroom. Ignoring the fact that 18 is the age of adulthood when other rights are recognized, the Biden appointee argued that if young adults are allowed to purchase handguns, perhaps children would be, too.
“Do 16- and 17-year-olds have a constitutional right to buy handguns?” Heytens wrote. “The plaintiffs are on the horns of a dilemma, because their arguments for why 18-year-olds have a constitutional right to buy handguns suggest that younger people do too—a startling result that the plaintiffs seek to obscure and for which they offer no defense.”
In response to the concurring opinion, Elliott Harding, who represented the plaintiffs, said Judge Heytens was trying to make the case about something it was not.
“That’s definitely not the case we brought,” Harding said. “If that’s being cited as a justification for denying the rights of 18 to 21-year-olds who are lawful adults that are otherwise qualified to purchase firearms, we think it is a red herring and argues well beyond the point that is presented to the court when we would reserve we don’t intend to make that argument. We haven’t made that argument. That’s an argument for a different day, for a different class of plaintiffs, and that’s not what the court was asked to consider.”
For his part, Circuit Judge Marvin Quattlebaum dissented, writing that the majority was making a policy argument and not doing its real job.
“I recognize that to many, banning sales of handguns to those under 21 makes good sense,” he wrote. “I appreciate that sentiment, especially during a time when gun violence is a problem in our country. But that is a policy argument. As judges, we interpret the law rather than make policy.”
Interestingly, back in July 2021, a three-judge panel of the same court struck down a decades-old federal law that prohibits retailers from selling handguns to young adults under 21. At the time, Circuit Judge Julius Richardson wrote for the majority: “We first find that 18-year-olds possess Second Amendment rights. They enjoy almost every other constitutional right, and they were required at the time of the Founding to serve in the militia and furnish their own weapons.”
The court later vacated that ruling when the plaintiff reached the age of 21.
Additionally, in January 2025, a panel of the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that 18- to 20-year-olds are protected by the Second Amendment, and the ban on them purchasing handguns violates their rights.
In that case, Judge Edith Jones wrote: “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.”
Read in its entirety at thetruthaboutguns.com.
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