Court blocks two PA gun laws restricting the self-defense rights of adults under 21

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Young, law-abiding adults are not second-class citizens and, as such, they shouldn’t be banned from exercising all of their constitutional rights.

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has issued a decision blocking the Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner from enforcing parts of a pair of laws that stopped those ages 18 to 20 years old from carrying firearms.

One law mandates that in order to conceal carry, citizens must receive a permit but to get a permit a citizen has to be at least 21 years old.

The other law bans residents from open carrying a gun during a state of emergency. Three residents and two pro-gun organizations sued the Police Commissioner to stop arresting  18 to 20 year old’s who open carry a firearm in violation of the state of emergency law.

Residents in Pennsylvania had been under a state of emergency for over three years due to COVID, the opioid addiction problem, and Hurricane Ida.

A district court had initially ruled in the favor of the state, but a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit saw the case differently. The district court had ruled that those under 21 are not part of “the people” mentioned in the Second Amendment, while the Third Circuit ruled that, as with other constitutional rights, the Second Amendment extends to those between 18 and 20 years old.

Pivotal to the Third Circuit’s ruling were the Supreme Court’s decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and New York State Pistol and Rifle Assn v. Bruen. In Heller, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of citizens to have firearms for purposes such as self defense inside the home. In Bruen, the Court laid out a test for courts to apply that requires them to look at the historical tradition of firearm restrictions. Bruen also affirmed the right of citizens to publicly carry a firearm outside the home.

More specifically, the Court wrote in Heller, “the people…refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community,” adding that “the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset.” Moreover, the Court stated that there is “a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right … belongs to all Americans.”

In Bruen the Court ruled that the Second Amendment, “guaranteed to ‘all Americans’ the right to bear commonly used arms in public subject to reasonable, well-defined restrictions.”

The Third Circuit followed this reasoning, along with the Supreme Court’s statement in Bruen that the Second Amendment is not a “second class right”.

The majority ruled,

“It is undisputed that 18-to-20-year-olds are among ‘the people’ for other constitutional rights such as the right to vote, freedom of speech, peaceable assembly, government petitions, and the right against unreasonable government searches and seizures. As we recently observed in Range, there is ‘no reason to adopt an inconsistent reading of ‘the people.’ Indeed, wholesale exclusion of 18-to-20-year-olds from the scope of the Second Amendment would impermissibly render ‘the constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense … ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.’’”

Jonathan Turley, a constitutional lawyer and professor at George Washington University, called the decision a “major win for gun rights.”

The ruling, however, “is likely to be appealed and could present a promising case for Supreme Court review,” he said. “Both the district court and appellate opinions are comprehensive and well-reasoned despite their opposing conclusions. The case could illuminate the permissible limits on the right after Heller and Bruen.”

This is not the first time states have tried to limit the right to self-defense for those young adults despite being old enough to vote and join the military.

These Americans face the same responsibilities and dangers of other adults. Many are on their own, whether they work, are in college, or both. They may be out late at night by necessity or by choice. They may live alone or with roommates. They may even have a spouse and children. They may be young women who work late and have to make their way back home alone and want to carry a gun to protect themselves.

Laws that prevent these young men and women from exercising their right to self defense are unconstitutional. They are not second class citizens and the right to protect themselves is not a second class right.

Another issue in this case is the recent decision by governors to make excessive use of emergency powers to get around the Constitution. They figured out that just about anything can be categorized as a crisis to take away civil liberties; these powers were so badly abused, in fact, that many legislatures, including Pennsylvania’s, have passed laws to limit their scope.

As Freedom Center writer William Wolfe wrote, “If the government can break the law or suspend our constitutional rights in the case of an emergency, it will create emergencies to break the law.”

It’s still happening, unfortunately. A recent case in point was when the governor of New Mexico decided to issue an executive order categorizing gun violence as a public health emergency and suspended the right of her citizens to carry a gun in cities and towns with the highest rates of murder, robbery, rape, and assault. This was blatantly unconstitutional, as a federal judge ruled just three days later, and was completely inane as all it would do is leave law-abiding citizens at the mercy of violent criminals already carrying illegal weapons.

With that in mind, one has to wonder how many people died or were wounded during those three years in Pennsylvania, where crime has exploded since 2020, because young people weren’t allowed to legally protect themselves against criminals due to a public health emergency.

The Third Circuit got this one right. No matter your age, the ability for adults to protect  themselves and their loved ones is an inalienable right.

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