A federal appeals court docket on Thursday struck down a longstanding federal ban that prevented the sale of handguns to People between the ages of 18 and 20 — a landmark gun management regulation in place since 1968.
The conservative Fifth Circuit U.S. Court docket of Appeals dominated that the federal legislation banning handgun gross sales to teenagers is inconsistent with the nation’s historic custom and violates the Second Modification.

A federal appeals court docket struck down a longstanding federal ban on handgun gross sales to People between the ages of 18 and 20 on Jan. 30, 2025.
STOCK PHOTO/Getty Photos
The choice cited the Supreme Court docket’s 2022 opinion by Clarence Thomas in New York State Rifle and Pistol Affiliation v. Bruen, which considerably expanded gun rights and threatens to rollback different gun security legal guidelines nationwide.
“Finally, the textual content of the Second Modification contains eighteen-to-twenty-year-old people amongst ‘the folks’ whose proper to maintain and bear arms is protected,” the court docket wrote in its opinion assertion.
The assertion went on, “The federal authorities has introduced scant proof that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds’ firearm rights through the founding-era had been restricted in an analogous method to the modern federal handgun buy ban, and its nineteenth century proof ‘can’t present a lot perception into the that means of the Second Modification when it contradicts earlier proof.'”
The speedy nationwide influence of the ruling is unclear. The case is nearly actually certain for the Supreme Court docket.
Handguns have been probably the most generally used weapons in murders and mass shootings for many years in america, in keeping with authorities knowledge analyzed by The Violence Challenge.
Final time period, the Supreme Court docket upheld a longstanding federal legislation prohibiting the possession of firearms by folks underneath home violence restraining orders.
Within the subsequent few weeks, it’s going to contemplate whether or not gun producers may be held chargeable for violent crimes perpetrated by criminals who simply get the weapons.