A federal judge has delivered another win for conservatives by striking down Texas’ ban on adults under the age of 21 from legally carrying a firearm. The judge ruled on Thursday that this ban violates the constitution’s second amendment.
Trump appointed U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, states in his ruling, that the Second Amendment, “as informed by Founding-era history and tradition,” the constitution did not exclude 18-20-year-olds from the right to bear arms and ruled that the injunction won’t go into effect.
As a part of Texas state law, most 18-20 year-olds were already not allowed to own a license to carry a gun for self-defense outside their homes. But last year, the legislature placed a new law into effect and effectively allowed Texans over the age of 21 to carry handguns outside their homes without applying for a special license for the same.
Firearms Policy Coalition filed a lawsuit in November along with two adult plaintiffs and argued that young adults were “fully protected by the Second Amendment at the time of its ratification.” This lawsuit was finally ruled out on Thursday.
This ruling comes after the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled in a landmark case this year that held the Second Amendment a guaranteed right to carry weapons in public for self-defense.
Attorney for Firearms Policy Coalition, Cody Wisniewski said in a statement that this ruling marks “a significant victory for the rights of young adults in Texas and demonstrates for the rest of the nation that similar bans cannot withstand constitutional challenges grounded in history.”
“Texas cannot point to a single Founding Era law that prohibited 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying a functional firearm for self-defense, because not only did no such law exist, but those individuals are an important reason why we have a Bill of Rights in the first place,” said Firearms Policy Coalition Senior Attorney for Constitutional Litigation, Cody J. Wisniewski.
“The Second Amendment protects the right of “the people” to keep and bear arms for self-defense.1 Yet Texas prohibits law-abiding 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying a handgun for self-defense outside the home. Does the Second Amendment allow this blanket prohibition?” Judge Pittman wrote in his opinion of this ruling.
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