The Denver-based federal appeals court cleared the way Tuesday for a 2023 Colorado law to take effect that will generally raise the age limit for purchasing firearms to 21.

Senate Bill 169 was originally scheduled to come into force in August last year, creating an offense for those who sell firearms to people under 21. Likewise, purchasing a firearm has become an offense for a person under 21 years of age. The law created exceptions for police officers, military personnel or gifts from family members.

A trial judge granted a preliminary injunction after finding that the challengers had shown they would likely succeed in their claim that the Second Amendment protected the right of 18- to 20-year-olds to buy guns. However, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit disagreed.

An age requirement for commercial gun sales, Judge Richard EN Federico wrote, does not run counter to the right to “keep and bear” guns.

The law “does not prohibit anyone from owning a firearm, nor does it prohibit certain transfers of gun ownership without purchase,” Federico explained. in the notice of November 5. “In fact, the federal government, nearly all 50 states, and the District of Columbia have each implemented a minimum age requirement for some or all firearm purchases.”

Justice Carolyn B. McHugh wrote separately to say she agreed with the outcome, but based on a different logic. Although she would have held that the right to keep and bear arms includes the commercial acquisition of firearms, McHugh believed that Colorado’s law nevertheless appeared to meet the constitutional test.

“Not only are guns the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States, but research shows that young people aged 18 to 20 commit gun homicides three times more than adults in the same age group. 21 years and over. Colorado’s law prohibiting people under 21 from purchasing firearms is a critical tool in preventing gun violence, and today’s decision underscores that it is also entirely constitutional,” said Janet Carter, senior director of issues and appeals at the gun safety organization Everytown Law. “This result will save lives. We applaud him.

The Loveland-based National Foundation for Gun Rights, speaking on behalf of plaintiffs Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, criticized the appeals panel for viewing Colorado’s law as a “mere business regulation” instead a question of constitutional magnitude.

“This is a very temporary setback, and RMGO will fight back. This law very clearly violates both the Second Amendment and Supreme Court precedent, and we look forward to removing it from the books,” Hannah said Hill, vice-president of the foundation. president.

SCOTUS Raises New Gun Challenges

Rocky Mountain Gun Owners has regularly sought to repeal gun safety laws following the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. The Court’s conservative majority established a new legal framework for analyzing the constitutionality of gun regulations generally, removing the government’s ability to illustrate how limiting Second Amendment rights would advance a compelling security goal public.

Instead, Bruen requires the government to demonstrate that a restriction is “consistent with this country’s historic tradition of gun regulation.”

Therefore, unlike other types of constitutional rights cases, arguments over the legality of SB 169 have triggered conflicting interpretations of history from the Founding Era through Reconstruction. In the trial court, the plaintiffs emphasized that men under 21 wielded firearms as part of their militia service, while the government argued that there was no unconditional right to firearms at the Foundation for 18 to 20 year olds, who were still considered “infants”.

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Philip A. Brimmer noted that Rocky Mountain Gun Owners had not established its own standing to challenge SB 169, but that two individual plaintiffs had raised viable claims. He agreed that the Second Amendment covers 18 to 20 year olds and that it protects the right of individual plaintiffs to obtain firearms for self-defense. Therefore, Colorado had to justify SB 169 through historical tradition.

Colorado “fails to demonstrate any evidence, at the founding era, that a total ban on the sale of firearms to minors was consistent with the right to bear arms,” Brimmer concluded. in an August 2023 order.

On appeal to the 10th Circuit, many outside organizations have weighed in, ranging from gun safety groups and Democratic-led states to the Firearms Policy Coalition, which seeks to repeal gun regulations.

During oral arguments in May, the parties spent much of their time debating whether young people aged 18 to 20, at the time of the Founding, would have been covered by the right to keep and bear arms.

“If we say it’s ‘everyone,’ then we have the problem of children of all ages being dragged toward Second Amendment rights,” said Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson. “And I don’t think anyone is seriously advocating that 5- or 10-year-olds were ever understood at the time of the Founding, or ever, to have the right to keep and bear arms.”

Not covered by the text

The panel’s decision indicated several areas where it had difficulty with the Supreme Court’s guidelines for evaluating Second Amendment challenges. Nonetheless, he agrees that 18- to 20-year-olds should not be excluded from constitutional protection even if they were not considered part of “the political community” in the 18th century.

But the majority of the panel held that the age limit for gun purchases did not implicate the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights, for a different reason.

The Supreme Court, in its historic 2008 decision District of Columbia v. Hellerfound that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms. The late Justice Antonin Scalia, however, clarified that “nothing, in our view, should be taken to cast doubt” on long-standing gun restrictions, which included “conditions and qualifications relating to the commercial sale of firearms.” ‘weapons’.

“We agree and believe that laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the sale and purchase of weapons do not implicate the plain text of the Second Amendment,” wrote Federico, nominated by President Joe Biden, for himself and Senior Judge Michael R. Murphy, a Bill Clinton appointee. Therefore, they did not undertake a comprehensive historical analysis of the Founding Era regulations.

McHugh, appointed by Barack Obama, believed that commercial arms sales were closely linked to the right to keep and bear arms. Therefore, she would have looked to history and tradition – although she thought it was acceptable to compare similar regulations back to the 20th century, based on the Supreme Court’s guidelines.

Looking at history, McHugh believed Colorado law was still constitutionally sound.

“Prior to 1900, at least twenty jurisdictions prohibited the sale of handguns and other deadly weapons to minors under the age of twenty-one,” she writes. “Moreover, eighteen of these laws went further than the Colorado law in prohibiting all acquisitions, not just purchases.”

A spokesperson for Gov. Jared Polis, who was the named defendant in the lawsuit, said the governor was happy to see “common-sense gun safety legislation” upheld by the 10th Circuit.

The case is Rocky Mountain Gun Owners et al. c.Polis.