The 11th U.S. Court of Appeals has upheld a Florida statute barring the purchase of long guns by young adults in the 18-to-20-year age group, essentially upholding a three-judge panel’s earlier ruling two years ago, but there is a twist, according to the Florida Phoenix.
If the ruling, which may be read here, is appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier won’t defend the law. Uthmeier, writing on “X,” explained, “Upon assuming office, I tasked my staff with reviewing Florida’s underlying law and whether it was consistent with the Second Amendment. Notwithstanding CA11’s opinion today, I believe restricting the right of law-abiding adults to purchase firearms is unconstitutional. The Fifth Circuit quite recently reached the same conclusion. If the NRA decides to seek further review at SCOTUS, I am directing my office not to defend this law. Men and women old enough to fight and die for our country should be able to purchase firearms to defend themselves and their families.”
Upon assuming office, I tasked my staff with reviewing Florida’s underlying law and whether it was consistent with the Second Amendment. Notwithstanding CA11’s opinion today, I believe restricting the right of law-abiding adults to purchase firearms is unconstitutional. The Fifth… https://t.co/Tdm8DVLXKn
— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) March 14, 2025
But a high court confrontation could be on the horizon, anyway, after a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled a federal law prohibiting young adults under age 21 from purchasing handguns violates the Second Amendment, according to an NBC News report.
Writing for the majority, Chief Circuit Judge William Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee, said in the opinion, “After the Florida Legislature enacted this prohibition in response to the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the National Rifle Association and an individual member sued the Commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The district court granted summary judgment for the Commissioner. We affirm because the Florida law is consistent with our historical tradition of firearm regulation.
“The Florida law that prohibits minors from purchasing firearms does not violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments,” Judge Pryor concluded 45 pages later, “because it is consistent with our historical tradition of firearm regulation. From the Founding to the late-nineteenth century, our law limited the purchase of firearms by minors in different ways. The Florida law also limits the purchase of firearms by minors. And it does so for the same reason: to stop immature and impulsive individuals, like Nikolas Cruz, from harming themselves and others with deadly weapons. Those similarities are sufficient to confirm the constitutionality of the Florida law.”
In between, Judge Pryor writes, “During the Founding era, minors generally lacked unrestricted access to firearms. By 1826, at least 21 of the 24 states ad mitted to the Union—representing roughly 89 percent of the population… had enacted laws that placed the onus on parents to provide minors with firearms for militia service. These laws reflected that, at common law, minors could not purchase weapons for themselves.”
Later, the judge alludes to firearms regulation at universities, which “commonly restricted firearm access both on and off campus…”
Then there was this, which seems to drift away from the Founding era guidelines set down in Bruen by the Supreme Court: “Mid-to-late-nineteenth-century laws consistent with these principles further establish that our law historically precluded the purchase of firearms by individuals under the age of 21. In the second half of the nineteenth century, 20 jurisdictions enacted laws that restricted access to arms for minors. Most of those laws prohibited all methods of providing arms to individuals under the age of 21. And only a few of these laws allowed parents to provide arms to their children.”
And then Judge Pryor observed: “The age of the majority ‘remained unchanged’ in the United States “from the country’s founding well into the twentieth century.” When World War II necessitated lowering the conscription age to 18, states lowered the age of majority too. And, in 1971, the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote to individuals at the age of 18. But for much of the first two centuries of our nation, our law limited the rights of individuals under the age of 21, including their purchase of firearms.
“From this history emerges a straightforward conclusion: the Florida law is consistent with our regulatory tradition in why and how it burdens the right of minors to keep and bear arms.”
But is it really constitutional? It appears likely the plaintiffs will appeal, especially if AG Uthmeier fulfills his promise to not defend the law. And they have some spirited dissent perhaps guiding their appeal arguments.
Several judges contributed concurring opinions, while three offered dissenting opinions, led by Judge Andrew L. Brasher, a 2020 Donald Trump appointee. In his dissent, Brasher wrote, “In the absence of historical precedent, the Second Amendment does not allow for a categorical ban on the ability of law-abiding adults to purchase a firearm for self-defense. The majority opinion’s contrary conclusion is hard to understand as anything other than a declaration that Second Amendment rights—alone among all our constitutional rights—start at the age of twenty-one. This conclusion splits with at least three sister circuits. And it is inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court has warned us that the Second Amendment is not a ‘second-class right,’ subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees. But the majority has read an age limit into the Second Amendment and that amendment alone.”
Later, Judge Brasher explained, “The Commissioner has presented no analogous Founding-era regulation that precluded young adults from purchasing firearms. The record of historical statutes the Commissioner did compile, which does not begin until the 1850s, does not establish a tradition of outlawing all firearms purchases by eighteen- to twenty-one-year-olds. These statutes were passed many years after the Founding…”
Brasher concludes his dissent by asserting, “The Second Amendment does not allow for a categorical ban on the ability of law-abiding adults ages eighteen to twenty one to purchase a firearm for self-defense. Because Supreme Court caselaw establishes that Florida’s ban is unconstitutional as applied to adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, I respectfully dissent.”
As noted by the Courthouse News, “The NRA has argued the law violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and flouts longstanding tradition allowing young adults to buy guns.”
With the contrasting opinion from the Fifth Circuit regarding handgun purchases by young adults, the odds appear to be increasing in favor of an eventual Supreme Court confrontation, allowing the NRA an opportunity to prove its position.
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