DOJ Declares Federal Ban on Handgun Sales to 18-to-20-Year-Olds Unconstitutional

One day after the DOJ said it won't appeal a ruling that deregulates silencers and short-barreled rifles, and the same day it sued San Jose over its concealed carry fee, the department dropped a third gun-rights opinion Friday: the federal ban on selling handguns to 18-to-20-year-olds is unconstitutional.

The opinion comes from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, written by Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser. It concludes that adults between 18 and 20 are among "the people" protected by the Second Amendment, and that the 1968 Gun Control Act's ban on licensed dealers selling them handguns or handgun ammunition can't be criminally enforced.

"Eighteen-year-olds may vote, serve on juries, be drafted, and face adult criminal penalties, including capital punishment," Gaiser said in a statement carried by CBS News, the Associated Press and others. "The Department of Justice may not constitutionally seek to impose criminal penalties on dealers who sell handguns to law-abiding adults who, in nearly every other relevant respect, are members of the political community."

Gaiser's memo cites a specific example: an 18-year-old who represented the U.S. in skeet shooting at the Tokyo Olympics could have faced a felony if a dealer sold her a handgun before or after she left for the University of Texas at Arlington, according to CBS News.

What the opinion actually does, and doesn't, change

This is not a court ruling and it doesn't repeal the statute. CBS News reported the OLC opinion is not legally binding and creates no precedent. What it does is signal to federal prosecutors nationwide that the department won't pursue felony charges against licensed dealers suspected of knowingly selling handguns to buyers under 21.

Under the existing law, buyers still need to be 21 to purchase a handgun from a federally licensed dealer, though 18-to-20-year-olds can already buy handguns from private, unlicensed sellers, and can buy long guns from licensed dealers at 18, according to the Associated Press.

The legal landscape has been split for years. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the federal ban unconstitutional last year, and the 3rd and 8th Circuits struck down similar state-level age rules. But the 4th Circuit upheld the federal restriction, and the 10th and 11th Circuits upheld state age limits, per CBS News. The Supreme Court has declined to take up the federal law since its 2022 decision requiring gun restrictions to match the "Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation," a test the Epoch Times noted underlies the entire OLC analysis.

The pushback

GIFFORDS, the gun control group, called the move "the latest move by the Trump administration to refuse to defend the law to please the gun lobby." Executive Director Emma Brown said in a statement that "people ages 18 to 20 are responsible for a disproportionate share of school shootings, public mass shootings, and gun homicides overall. There is a reason minimum age laws exist. We will do everything we can to fight this."

Brown's underlying claim, that this age group accounts for a disproportionate share of gun violence relative to its size, is the core argument gun control advocates have made for age-based purchase restrictions for decades. None of the sources reviewed here independently verified that specific statistic with government data, but it reflects a consistent position from groups like GIFFORDS and Everytown.

Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law, was more direct about the practical fallout, telling the Associated Press: "Federal prosecutors nationwide will stop holding illegal sellers of handguns to 18- to 20-year-olds accountable if they know the DOJ has pulled the rug out from under them. Abandoning protections that target the highest-risk age group for handgun violence isn't just an unconscionable surrender of public safety, it is a dangerous dereliction of duty."

Breitbart and the Epoch Times largely reprinted the DOJ's own press release language and Gaiser's statement without including the GIFFORDS or Everytown reactions, framing the story purely as a Second Amendment win. The Associated Press version, carried by MyNorthwest, Local10 and Click on Detroit, included both Tirschwell's criticism and the historical-tradition legal test, giving a more complete picture of the fight ahead.

The underlying statute is still on the books. Because an OLC opinion carries no court authority, it wouldn't survive a future administration that decides to enforce the law again, and it doesn't resolve the circuit split that has left federal appeals courts divided on whether the ban is constitutional in the first place. Whether the Supreme Court eventually takes up the question remains uncertain.