Supreme Court declines to take case about banning guns for 18-to-20-year-olds

WASHINGTON −The Supreme Court on Monday declined to get involved in the ongoing debate about age restrictions for weapons, despite pleas from both Minnesota and the gun rights groups that successfully challenged Minnesota’s age limit on handgun permits.

The court declined to review an appeals court’s decision that Minnesota’s law violates the Second Amendment rights of 18-to-20-year-olds.

Minnesota had restricted permits to carry handguns in public for self-defense to people age 21 or older.

That was challenged by gun rights groups which have filed similar lawsuits in Georgia, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

Although the St. Louis-based 8^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Minnesota’s law, the gun rights groups agreed with the state that the Supreme Court should get involved now to settle the issue nationally.

More than thirty states and the District of Columbia have similar regulations, according to Minnesota.

In rejecting the law, the appeals court cited the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 ruling that firearm regulations must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Minnesota said the 8th Circuit failed to fully account for the high court’s 2024 decision that regulations don’t have to have an “historical twin.”

The state asked the Supreme Court to either take up the issue itself or at least direct the appeals court to reconsider Minnesota’s rule.

“Hundreds of years of common and statutory law history supports restricting firearm use by minors,” the state’s lawyers said. They said 18-to-20-year-olds are “the most dangerous and homicidal age group in the United States.”

The 8th Circuit said Minnesota didn’t provide enough evidence to back that up.

And gun rights groups argue there were no age-based restrictions on firearms until more than sixty years after the Second Amendment was ratified.