The court said the state did not provide enough evidence to show that firearms bans for 18- to 20-year-olds were consistent with ‘historical analogues.’
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from the state of Minnesota asking the high court to resurrect its law barring adults younger than 21 from obtaining a permit to carry a firearm in public.
The nine justices declined to hear the state’s appeal, letting stand a 2024 ruling by the St. Louis-based Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found the restriction violated the rights of adults aged 18, 19, and 20 to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The federal appeals court in St. Louis noted that the Second Amendment sets no age limit and generally allows for law-abiding, ordinary young adults to have and bear firearms.
In ruling against Minnesota, the appeals court said the state did not provide enough evidence to show that firearms bans for 18- to 20-year-olds were consistent with “historical analogues,” part of a legal test established under the Supreme Court’s 2022 landmark Bruen decision that prioritizes a historical analysis of gun regulations in the United States. The test requires courts to determine whether modern gun laws align with America’s historical traditions.
“If the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, it does not infringe the right of the people,” the ruling stated. “If not, then the regulation improperly infringes the individual right to keep and bear arms.”
In the Bruen case, also called the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court ruled against New York state and declared that its concealed carry law, which mandates the individual to have a special need for self-protection, was unconstitutional. The state’s requirement was not consistent with the traditions of U.S. firearms laws, it found.
The state also failed to support claims “that 18 to 20-year-olds present a danger to the public … with enough evidence,” the appeals court wrote, adding that using recent crime data statistics “would be a stretch to say that an 18-year-old ‘poses a clear threat of physical violence to another.’”
