A federal court has ruled that Pennsylvania’s ban on adults under 21 carrying guns in public violates the US Constitution.
A US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit panel made the decision in a split ruling, based on the Second Amendment, which states that “the people” have the right to “keep and bear arms,” The ruling states that it applies to all Americans, including 18- to 20-year-olds, and there is no founding-era law that supports disarming people in that age group.
Pennsylvania law prohibits carrying guns in public without a license, but people under 21 cannot apply for a license. While most adults in Pennsylvania can legally carry guns openly in public, certain criteria, such as having a license, must be met in order to do so legally once a state of emergency has been declared, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adults under 21 argued that this violated their constitutional rights in a lawsuit filed in 2020.
In 2021, the US District Judge William Stickman IV ruled against them by stating that the restrictions were “longstanding” and “presumptively lawful,” which falls “outside the scope of the Second Amendment,” based on guidelines outlined in a 2008 Supreme Court decision.
The plaintiffs appealed, arguing that the ruling was wrong. A 2022 Supreme Court ruling established that the right of adults to carry guns in public is “squarely protected by the Second Amendment” and Pennsylvania “has not carried its burden in proving that the state’s restrictions as to 18-to-20-year-olds are analogous to any historical restrictions.”
Pennsylvania officials argued that the restrictions fell outside the scope of the constitution, as adults aged 18 to 20 are not part of “the people” and should not be struck down. However, Judge Jordan stated that 18-to-20-year-olds are like other subsets of the American public and are presumptively among “the people” to whom Second Amendment rights extend. Therefore, Pennsylvania officials would have to identify historical laws that limited the population’s gun rights, which they did not do.
