The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel recently released an opinion, signed by Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser for the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, concluding that the federal ban on licensed firearms dealers selling handguns to 18-20-year-old U.S. citizens is unconstitutional.
The historically reasoned 49-page opinion determined that such young adults are among “the people” protected by the Second Amendment and that the government cannot show a historical tradition supporting such a restriction on this civil right.
Still, this opinion does not and cannot repeal language from Gun Control Act of 1968 that makes these sales illegal. This opinion is not a court ruling and does not bind courts. It also cannot repeal state laws or other restrictions. It is a legal opinion written to guide the courts and to, potentially, be cited by attorneys in any cases related to this matter.
Still, it marks a decisive moment in this long civil-rights battle to win back and defend this basic right.
An 18-20-year-old, after all, is deemed to be mature enough to be drafted, to serve with arms to defend this nation, and to possibly die for this nation. Adults in this demographic are legally thought to be mature enough to understand politics enough to vote. They are considered to legally be mature enough to decide life-and-death decisions on a jury. They can even be sentenced to death for their actions.
This opinion notes in its first paragraph that an “eighteen-year-old represented the United States at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, shooting skeet. Yet, due to statutes predicated on concerns over an eighteen-year-old’s ability to handle a pistol as a responsible adult, it would have been a federal felony if a licensed dealer had sold her such a firearm before she left or after she returned to her studies at the University of Texas at Arlington.”
The inconsistency of this treatment of a constitutionally protected right is simply not defensible; however, this opinion dives deep into the historical analysis—thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen test—of how federal, state, and local government bodies have treated 18-20-year-old citizens. The DOJ’s exhaustive legal analysis finds the ban, at each turn, to be unconstitutional.
There is no official count of the number of 18-20-year-old gun owners in the U.S., but available survey estimates (the 2024 National Firearms Survey) put the number of in the range of roughly 1.5-2 million. There are about 13 million U.S. citizens now in this age bracket and about 250,000 of them serve in the military in active duty or reserves. So, the restriction is impacting a lot of people.
In a constitutional argument, these figures should not matter; however, gun-control groups and the politicians they support clearly want to disrupt and impede gun ownership among our youth and young adults in order to suppress the overall use of this right.
At the end of the opinion, the DOJ states that “we conclude only that section 922(b)(1) and (c)(1) may not be enforced to impose criminal penalties on dealers who sell handguns, the “quintessential self-defense weapon,” Heller, 554 U.S. at 629, to a class of law-abiding adults who in nearly every other domain are full members of the political community.”
This opinion is sure to be cited in courtrooms and legislatures, which is the point.
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