The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is the only portion of the Bill of Rights that some politicians want to limit to only those 21 years of age and older. And two pro-rights organizations are currently battling for young adults court.
The Battle for Young Adults 2A Rights
At the same time, the Second Amendment Foundation is suing Connecticut over its law banning handgun ownership by adults under 21, the National Rifle Association is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its case challenging Florida’s law that doesn’t allow 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds to purchase rifles and shotguns.
Connecticut In The Crosshairs
On May 18, Succow v. Bondi argued that age-based gun bans violate the Second Amendment rights of lawful adults who are under 21 years of age. The Connecticut Citizens Defense League (CCDL) and two individuals, Samuel Towne and Zachary Succow, are also plaintiffs in the action.
The complaint argues that states can’t simply deprive 18-, 19-, and 20-year-old citizens of one constitutionally protected right while recognizing them as adults as far as other rights are concerned.
“The Heller Court has explicitly recognized the handgun as ‘the quintessential self-defense weapon’ in the United States, and that a complete prohibition on their carry and use is necessarily invalid,” the complaint explains.
“But Defendants’ laws … and the related regulations, policies, practices, customs designed to implement the same, and Defendants’ continuing enforcement of them, prevent law-abiding, responsible adult citizens under age twenty-one— including Plaintiffs Succow and Towne, and the similarly situated members of Connecticut Citizens Defense League and the Second Amendment Foundation—from doing so, in violation of the Second and Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
Ultimately, Defendants are asking the court to make a declaratory judgment that the provisions of the law are unconstitutional on their face and, as applied to the plaintiffs, to issue a permanent injunction enjoining all law enforcement in the state from enforcing provisions of the law.
NRA & SCOTUS
Concerning the NRA lawsuit, the organization has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a challenge to Florida’s restrictive law banning the sale of rifles and shotguns to adults under 21.
As the NRA pointed out in a recent news alert, Florida has completely banned 18- to 20-year-olds from purchasing a firearm of any kind for any purpose for seven years—a direct violation of Second Amendment rights.
As the petition explains, because of a split on the matter at the circuit court level, SCOTUS needs to hear this case to resolve that split.
“The federal courts of appeals are intractably divided over the constitutionality of laws that restrict the ability of 18-to-20-year-olds to acquire or carry firearms,” the petition says.
“Most immediately, while the Eleventh Circuit … upheld Florida’s ban on adults in this age group purchasing any firearm from any source, and a panel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a similar Colorado age ban, a panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently found unconstitutional the federal ban on 18-to-20-year-olds purchasing handguns from licensed dealers, in a decision that is directly and unequivocally in conflict with this one—and that the court below recognized and deliberately departed from.”
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