The federal appellate courts are split on the question of when, exactly, we're fully vested with our Second Amendment rights. Hopefully the Supreme Court will soon step in and adopt the common sense position that 18-year-olds who can vote, be drafted, get married, sign contracts, and exercise every other enumerated right can also keep and bear arms, but in the meantime state legislatures around the country are continuing to stake out their own positions.
The Florida House voted this week to repeal a law banning adults under the age of 21 from purchasing firearms, while a bill in Kentucky to allow 18-year-olds to lawfully carry failed to get out of committee. Lawmakers in Iowa are taking a different stance than their Kentucky counterparts, with the House of Representatives approving a measure allowing under-21s to carry concealed on Thursday.
A recent federal court ruling struck down Minnesota’s ban on 18, 19, and 20-year-olds from possessing a pistol or revolver. The bill passed on a 79 to 18 vote. Representative Lindsay James, a Democrat from Dubuque who voted no, says she understands court decisions have set the stage for this type of legislation, but James says data about gun violence is a concern.
If the bill becomes law, 18, 19 and 20-year-olds will still be barred from buying guns from federally-licensed gun dealers. Holt says that’s necessary because the National Instant Criminal Background Check System — called NICS — hasn’t caught up with a 2022 US Supreme Court ruling that expanded gun rights.
Data actually shows that overall, rates of "gun violence" are pretty rare in the United States, but the highest levels among age groups are clustered between 18 and 34-year-olds, not 21. After the age of 34, gun-related suicides outnumber gun-involved homicides, so using James' logic she could argue that no age is appropriate to exercise our Second Amendment rights.
But we don't base being able to exercise our civil rights on the number of individuals who will abuse them for nefarious purposes. Social media is home to all kinds of illicit marketplaces; from drugs to human beings, but no one is seriously suggesting that we ban Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat because bad people are doing bad things on those platforms.
Even if the rate of "gun violence" is highest among younger adults, the vast majority of under-21s will never commit a violent crime of any kind. Why then, should they be punished for the unlawful acts by a handful of their peers?
While Iowa is moving in the right direction, the Democrat-controlled Assembly in Nevada is looking to crack down on young adults exercising their right to keep and bear arms. On Thursday a joint session of the Judiciary Committee is slated to vote on AB 245, which would make it a gross misdemeanor for an adult younger than 21 to purchase or possess a semiautomatic rifle or shotgun. Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo is likely to veto the measure if it clears both chambers, but Nevada gun owners can't take that for granted.
The Supreme Court has a chance to address the issue in less than a month from now. That recent federal court ruling mentioned above came in a case called Worth v. Jacobson; a challenge to Minnesota's ban on concealed carry for under 21s brought by several individual plaintiffs and the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, Firearms Policy Coalition, and Second Amendment Foundation. The defendants submitted their cert petition asking SCOTUS to overturn the Eighth Circuit's decision that found Minnesota's statute a violation of the Second Amendment back in January, and the plaintiffs submitted their own reply (also urging the Court to accept the case) in mid-March. Earlier this week Minnesota AG Keith Ellison delivered the last round of pre-cert briefings to the Court with his own reply brief, and the Court is now scheduled to debate taking up the Worth case at its April 17th conference.
Even if the Court grants cert after just one round of review, the justices won't hear oral arguments until the fall, and a decision probably wouldn't come down until sometime in 2026. In the meantime, the debate over when our 2A rights kick in will continue in courtrooms and statehouses across the country... including in Iowa, where HF 924 now heads to the state Senate.
