From WWW.FOXNEWS.COM
A federal judge in Virginia has struck down a law prohibiting licensed federal firearms dealers from selling handguns to 18- to 20-year-olds, finding that it violates their Second Amendment rights and is unconstitutional.
In a 71-page ruling issued Wednesday, U. S. District Court Judge Robert Payne said that since adults under 21 have the right to vote, join the military and serve on a federal jury, there is no reason why federal law should restrict them from buying a firearm.
“If the Court were to exclude 18-to-20-year-olds from the Second Amendment’s protection, it would impose limitations on the Second Amendment that do not exist with other constitutional guarantees,” Payne wrote.
“Because the statutes and regulations in question are not consistent with our Nation’s history and tradition, they, therefore, cannot stand,” he wrote.
His opinion relied heavily on the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, which said that courts must review the country’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation” to evaluate the constitutionality of a gun restriction. That landmark ruling has led to several successful challenges to longstanding gun control laws brought by gun owners and Second Amendment groups.
Since the Bruen decision, courts have declared unconstitutional laws including federal measures designed to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and defendants under felony indictment, as well as a ban on possessing guns with the serial number removed. A federal judge recently cited the high court decision in ruling against a Minnesota law prohibiting 18- to 20-year-olds from getting permits to carry handguns in public. A judge struck down a similar law last year on gun restrictions for young adults in Texas.
Payne, who cited the 2022 Supreme Court ruling repeatedly in his ruling, wrote that the government failed to present “any evidence of age-based restrictions on the purchase or sale of firearms from the colonial era, Founding or Early Republic.” The lack of similar regulations from those time periods indicates that the “Founders considered age-based regulations on the purchase of firearms to circumscribe the right to keep and bear arms confirmed by the Second Amendment,” he wrote…. (Read more)
