The Third Circuit Court of Appeals drove a nail in another gun control measure, this time in Pennsylvania. The federal appeals court shot down Keystone State’s ban on young adults 18-20 carrying firearms during declared states of emergency.
The Reload has more details:
In a 2-1 decision, a Third Circuit Court of Appeals panel blocked Pennsylvania from enforcing a trio of state statutes that together prohibit people between the ages of 18 and 20 from legally carrying firearms when a state of emergency is declared. The majority opinion, which reversed a lower court ruling, centered around the age at which the Second Amendment’s text protects Americans.
“The words ‘the people’ in the Second Amendment presumptively encompass all adult Americans, including 18- to-20-year-olds, and we are aware of no founding-era law that supports disarming people in that age group,” Judge Kent A. Jordan wrote in “Accordingly, we will reverse and remand.”
The ruling adds to a growing body of federal court decisions casting doubt on age-based gun restrictions. That collection has grown in the time since the Supreme Court handed down its New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen decision in 2022. The new ruling arrives as federal judges in Texas, Tennessee, and Minnesota have similarly ruled that adults under the age of 21 are protected by the Second Amendment and cannot be deprived of the right to carry firearms for self-defense.
Bloomberg Law devoted multiple paragraphs to the dissent:
Judge L. Felipe Restrepo dissented and said there was evidence that the Founding-era public “would not have understood the text of the Second Amendment to extend its protection to those under 21.”
He noted students under 21 at universities like Yale, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Virginia weren’t considered full adults and the schools prohibited their possession of firearms during the Founding-era. He added that people under 21 in that era didn’t just lack some legal rights, but nearly all of them.
“The fact that this class of persons had no power to independently exercise almost any rights of speech, association, conscience, marriage, contract, suffrage, petition, or property, strongly suggests that they would not be understood as receiving constitutional protections as members of ‘the people’ under the Second Amendment, Restrepo said.
The good judge was reaching pretty hard to come up with that. But such is the dedication to the gun control plantation among those who don’t like the Second Amendment.
Bruen wins in Illinois? The open borders US Supreme Court LET the Illinois gun ban stand. What did I miss?Asking for a friend.
John said, except in Illinois.
Jurisprudence escapes some jurists. That and plain text.
You are correct Rabble Rouser, apparently my eyes glossed over that part.
If the Democrats think 16 year olds are mature adults and should be allowed to vote, then 16 year olds should be adult enough to buy and own a rifle, shotgun, or pistol of their choice. Republicans are not aggressive enough or smart enough to use the Democrats words against them. We need politicians who have been in the military and know how to do battle, mentally, against their opponents. But that probably won’t work with today’s woke military. It must be a requirement for Republicans to get a lobotomy and have their gonads removed when they decide to run for office.
I have often found age-based restrictions on one of the most fundamental rights of American citizenship to be ludicrous at best (if you assume good intent of these laws, which I don’t). You can be drafted at 18, a select-fire rifle placed in your hands, and be sent to war to fight and possibly die defending that very right. Then, you come home and the same government that sent you to war and entrusted you with a ‘weapon of war’ promptly takes the right to own a civilian version of the same rifle you carried in service of that government. The hypocrisy is staggering.
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Put simply, if you choose to define an adult as someone aged 18 and over, then there is no logical construct where you can deny that adult citizen all the rights and privileges afforded to that citizen. I simply cannot wrap my mind around the logical process of the liberal politician, which leads me to believe there is no logic at all. Gun control is never about public safety, even pre-Bruen. It has always been about behavioral control of a population by preventing the means for resisting tyranny. Our Founding Fathers spelled this out quite clearly, though the left tries to suppress this fact continuously.
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This attempt was no different than efforts to ban rifles through PICA here, or the SAFE Act in NY, or the bans in California, ad infinitum. They are all separate means to the same end. A disarmed population is a controlled population. This has played out time and time again throughout history. The spark that set off the Revolutionary War was not taxation, as is often taught. The impetus was the attempted confiscation of arms and equipment from the colonists by the British Army. History repeats itself over and over again. Each win is important, because it shuts off one more avenue of attack against 2A by the left and makes our position stronger. As discouraged as I often feel here in Illinois, its good to know that in some places, judges still get it right from time to time.
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Congratulations to the citizens of Pennsylvania on this latest victory to preserve our rights. You can be sure that work is underway to undermine this decision, however, and a new fight will be just around the corner.