A San Diego federal judge has upheld a California law that limits people under the age of 21 from buying semi-automatic rifles and other long guns, ruling that similar laws dating back centuries have also limited gun ownership by young adults for safety reasons.
“The restrictions embodied in (the challenged law) were enacted because individuals under the age of 21 lack cognitive maturity and are disproportionately prone to violence,” U.S. District Judge M. James Lorenz wrote in his ruling, filed Friday. “For the same reasons, the rights of this age group were curtailed during the Founding era, including access to firearms.”
Lorenz’s historical analysis was a key component of the ruling, as it now is in any Second Amendment ruling since the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision that put an emphasis on the history and tradition of weapons prohibitions in the U.S.
Friday’s ruling was the latest in a case with a somewhat convoluted procedural history that has bounced between the district judge and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It will likely also face appeal.
The suit was originally filed in 2019 by young adults, gun dealers and advocacy groups challenging part of a California law that limited the ability for people 18 to 20 years old to purchase any long guns, such as rifles or shotguns. It was an amendment the California Legislature passed in 2018 after a 19-year-old Florida man used an AR-15-style rifle to kill 17 people and wound 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
The state law allowed several exceptions, such as for military members and law enforcement officers, as well as for those with a valid hunting license. The California Legislature again amended the law in 2019 to remove the hunting-license exception for the purchase of semi-automatic rifles after a 19-year-old gunman was able to obtain such a gun days before a deadly shooting at a Poway synagogue.
The plaintiffs reworked their lawsuit, challenging both the hunting-license requirement and the semi-automatic rifle ban. Lorenz, in a 2020 order, declined to issue a preliminary injunction against either law.
The plaintiffs appealed to the 9th Circuit, where a three-judge panel issued a mixed ruling in May 2022 that struck down the semi-automatic rifle limitations as unconstitutional.
The government appealed that decision, asking for a full 11-judge panel to decide on the case. But by that time, the Supreme Court had issued its ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, setting the new history-focused standard for how courts must analyze Second Amendment restrictions. In light of Bruen — which requires courts to rule on gun cases based on the “Second Amendment’s plain text … consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” — the 9th Circuit vacated all previous rulings in the under-21 case and sent it back to Lorenz.
The plaintiffs again asked Lorenz to enjoin the state from enforcing the law, arguing that young adults have all the same rights as those 21 and older — and that historical laws agreed with that view. They also argued that the exceptions to the law, such as those for law enforcement and military members, are too narrow.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office countered with a 1,608-page response that in part detailed a number of historical laws that limited or prohibited people under 21 years old from possessing firearms.
Lorenz ruled that history was on the side of Bonta’s office. “The government has identified well-established and representative historical analogues,” he ruled.
He cited an 1817 law in Columbia, S.C., an 1855 law in Alabama, an 1858 law in Tennessee and an 1859 law in Kentucky that all limited or prohibited gun rights for people under 21 years old.
“In keeping with the public understanding that individuals under the age of 21 were ‘infants’ and did not enjoy the same rights as adults, numerous states and municipalities enacted age-based restrictions on the sale, gift, or loan of weapons including firearms,” Lorenz wrote, noting that such laws were passed “to ensure public safety due to the immaturity of individuals under the age of 21.”
The California law in question “was animated by the same purpose,” he wrote.
The judge also ruled that the police and military exceptions, as well as exceptions for guns transferred by an immediate family member, are broad enough that the law does not constitute a prohibition. But what the exceptions do ensure, Lorenz ruled, is that “the individual under 21 entrusted with a firearm receives a measure of supervision absent from purely commercial transactions.”
The Attorney General’s Office did not respond Monday to a request for comment on the ruling. Nor did the Firearms Policy Coalition, one of the plaintiffs in the case and one of the leading organizations in California and elsewhere focused on overturning gun-restriction laws in court.
The plaintiffs are expected to appeal the ruling.
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