Supreme Court Overturns Ruling That Allowed People Between 18 and 21 to Carry Guns

 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday vacated a lower court’s ruling that had allowed adults in Pennsylvania under the age of 21 to carry firearms in public during states of emergencies, telling a federal appeals court to reconsider the case.

The Supreme Court did not explain its ruling, and there were no dissents.

The two-sentence decision by the high court that the justices indicated they would not take up the appeal by Pennsylvania state officials who sought overturn the lower court’s ruling. Instead, the justices ordered the case to be remanded back to the lower courts and vacated the earlier decision that blocked the state law.

Under the Uniform Firearms Act, Pennsylvania bars individuals aged 18 to 20 from openly carrying guns in public during a declared state of emergency. A lawsuit was filed against the state over the law, with lawyers for the petitioners saying that the state law did not adhere to U.S. traditions and norms under the Supreme Court’s decision on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

In striking down a 100-year-old New York gun law that restricted places where people can carry firearms, the Supreme Court in June 2022 had established that the state law was unconstitutional because there were not any similar laws in the United States when the Second Amendment was ratified.

Earlier in 2024, the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked that law in a divided, 2–1 decision. The majority of judges ruled that Pennsylvania wasn’t able to show that the age-21 requirement kept up with the Bruen legal test and that it wasn’t in keeping with those U.S. traditions.

In their lawsuit, two gun rights organizations are challenging the Pennsylvania law along with three people under the age of 21 when the petition was filed in 2020. They called on the Supreme Court to reject arguments from the state without ordering any reconsideration from the lower courts and argued that lower courts have a “broad agreement” on the 3rd Circuit Court’s decision to overturn the state law.

The appeals court, in overturning the law, said that there is a “conspicuously sparse record of state regulations on 18-to-20-year-olds at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification,” adding that in 1792, there was actually a law passed in Congress mandating “all able-bodied men to enroll in the militia and to arm themselves upon turning 18.”