BATON ROUGE, La. \u2014 A U.S. appeals court on Thursday ruled against a federal law requiring young adults to be 21 to buy handguns, finding it violated the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ruling, handed down by a panel of three judges on the conservative U.S. 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, comes amid major shifts in the national firearm legal landscape<\/a> following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court<\/a> decision that expanded gun rights in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The court found that people aged 18-to-20 should not be prohibited from buying guns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUltimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among \u2018the people\u2019 whose right to keep and bear arms is protected,\u201d the court wrote in their ruling. The ruling sends the case back to a lower court judge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the past, the appeals court has upheld the age restriction. However, since the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling that said firearm restrictions must be rooted in the nation\u2019s historical traditions, judges in states like Minnesota<\/a>, Virginia<\/a> and Texas<\/a> have struck down similar laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Biden administration had fought those rulings. It is uncertain exactly how the Trump administration might proceed, but he told an NRA audience<\/a> during last year\u2019s campaign that \u201cno one will lay a finger on your firearms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Supreme Court, meanwhile, decided to keep a federal gun law on the books last year. The high court overturned a different ruling from the 5th Circuit and upheld a law<\/a> intended to protect victims of domestic violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those challenging the ban included the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Louisiana Shooting Association. \u201cIf we can trust young adults to defend our country, we can certainly trust them to own any and all legal firearms,\u201d said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation<\/p>\n\n\n\n Federal law requires a person to be 21 to purchase a handgun from a licensed firearm dealer and 18 to buy a long gun from a dealer, according to Everytown for Gun Safety<\/a>. There is an 18-year-old minimum for handgun purchases from unlicensed sellers and no minimum age for long guns, according to the group\u2019s research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Giffords Law Center called the decision reckless and said age restrictions help prevent violence. \u201cWe hope the current law will be ultimately upheld,\u201d legal director David Pucino said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n