Eighteen-year-olds “may vote, serve on juries, be drafted, and face adult criminal penalties,” and now they can purchase handguns and handgun ammunition from a licensed firearm dealer without the dealer being prosecuted by the DOJ if they are otherwise eligible, Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser announced in a statement Friday.
The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel found the federal prohibition on licensed dealers selling handguns and handgun ammunition to 18-20-year-olds is inconsistent with the Second Amendment and therefore cannot be criminally enforced by the Justice Department.
Since 1968 federal law has prohibited licensed dealers from selling handguns or handgun ammunition to individuals under the age of 21, thanks to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. At the time Congress said access to handguns was correlated to violent crime. The rule was again upheld in 2012 by the 5th Circuit.
In Reese v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, adult individuals under age 21 sued over this very rule. The 5th Circuit ultimately ruled that there is no historic tradition that could justify banning the sale of handguns and handgun ammunition to 18-20-year-olds, as required by the new Bruen test established by the Supreme Court. Notably, however, the 5th Circuit’s decision only covered a handful of states that fell within the 5th Circuit’s purview.
But now the DOJ will no longer prosecute licensed dealers in any state for selling a handgun to an 18-year-old who is otherwise qualified to purchase.
To be clear, the statute is still on the books, and Congress did not repeal it. But the DOJ says it will not seek criminal penalties against dealers who sell to law-abiding 18-20-year-olds.
“The Constitution protects the people’s right to keep and bear arms. The Department of Justice may not constitutionally seek to impose criminal penalties on dealers who sell handguns to law-abiding adults who, in nearly every other relevant respect, are members of the political community,” Gaiser said in a statement.
The DOJ said it “found no Founding era history or tradition of precluding legal adults from purchasing firearms to protect public safety. To the contrary, at the Founding, militia statutes overwhelmingly required service beginning at 18 and required enrollees to furnish their own arms.”
The opinion does not affect the enforcement of state laws that prohibit the sale of handguns to adults under 21.
