By Christina van Waasbergen | Courthouse News Service
A Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled Thursday that a decades-old federal law banning handgun purchases by 18 to 20-year-olds violates the Second Amendment.
The ruling is an about-face from a prior ruling where the appeals court initially found the law constitutional in 2012. The three-judge panel attributed the switch up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which held that gun restrictions must be consistent with the historical tradition of firearm regulation in the U.S.
“Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among ‘the people’ 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,” U.S. Circuit Judge Edith Jones wrote in the panel’s opinion.