Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Clinton Judge Spares Massachusetts’ Ban On 18-Year-Olds Owning Guns

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A federal judge in Massachusetts allowed the state’s restrictions on gun ownership by adults under the age of 21 to stand Friday.

Multiple pro-Second Amendment organizations sued Massachusetts over its refusal to grant 18-to-20-year-old adults a “License to Carry” that would allow them to own handguns and semiautomatic long guns in February 2025. In his 23-page ruling, United States District Judge George A. O’Toole, Jr., a Clinton appointee, of the District of Massachusetts said that restrictions on minors owning firearms rendered the state’s law constitutional.

“The statutory age restriction fits within that principle—distilled from our Founding-era regulatory tradition—in both why and how it burdens the Second Amendment right of eighteen- to twenty-year-olds,” O’Toole wrote.

“Massachusetts law permits eighteen- to twenty-year-olds to possess certain classes of firearms pursuant to a valid Massachusetts FID card. That is evident from the undisputed fact that Escher currently owns firearms pursuant to a valid FID card,” O’Toole added. “Moreover, like the Founding-era militia laws, Massachusetts law contains an exception to the age restriction for military service. Of course, that is not the only exception: even outside of the military context, Massachusetts’ regime also allows minors to temporarily possess semiautomatic firearms for certain lawful activities—including firearms instruction and hunting—while under the supervision of properly licensed adults.”

The Second Amendment Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In June, a Florida appellate court ruled that the Second Amendment barred the state from restricting concealed carry to those 21 and older. In an 18-page opinion, Judge Spencer D. Levine wrote for a unanimous panel that the Second Amendment was not a “second-class right.”

“The plain text of the Second Amendment covers the right of 18- to 20-year-olds to the public carry of firearms, which would include concealed carry as a manner of public carry,” the decision in Eubanks v. Florida reads.