Original article can be found here.
One hundred seventy-four members of Congress have demanded that the Justice Department revive a 1968 federal ban on licensed handgun sales to 18-, 19-, and 20-year-old Americans. Representatives Mike Thompson, Jamie Raskin, and Lucy McBath led the letter. Thompson chairs the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force and sits on the Judiciary Committee.
The lawmakers asked the Department of Justice to rescind its opinion that the Gun Control Act’s ban on Federal Firearms Licensee handgun sales to adults under 21 may not be enforced. Compliance would restore a purchase restriction the department has declined to apply. The target is not a new bill. It is a 1968 statute that treats legal adults as too young to buy a handgun from a licensed dealer.
That restriction collides with the plain text of the Second Amendment. The right of the people to keep and bear arms does not contain an exception for 18-year-olds. Those same Americans can enlist, deploy, and take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Congress now wants the Justice Department to treat them as a disarmed subclass at the gun-shop counter.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 is a statute. The Second Amendment is the supreme law. When a federal agency concludes that a dealer ban on legal adults may not be enforced, it is acknowledging that collision. Thompson, Raskin, McBath, and 171 colleagues want that acknowledgment withdrawn so the old restriction can be put back in force.
The letter does not create new criminal law. It pressures the executive branch to apply an existing sales ban the department has already declined to enforce. Federal Firearms Licensees would again face the 1968 rule against transferring handguns to customers who are 18, 19, or 20. That is a commercial gate, not a new Act of Congress, and it is the gate 174 lawmakers want slammed shut.
What happens next sits with the Justice Department. It can stand on its opinion that the 1968 FFL handgun ban may not be enforced, or it can rescind that opinion under political pressure from 174 members of Congress. Either choice will be measured against the Constitution, not against a task-force press release.
Oaths run to the Constitution. An 18-year-old who can be ordered into combat is part of the people the Second Amendment names. A 1968 statute does not repeal that. The Department of Justice should refuse to restore a dealer ban that treats those adults as second-class rights-holders.
References
- https://mikethompson.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/gun-violence-prevention-task-force-chair-thompson-judiciary-committee
- https://www.dailyrepublic.com/news/letter-calls-on-doj-to-uphold-1968-handgun-sales-law/article_596bb5d5-698c-46c7-a302-0507d2d224a4.html
- https://www.quiverquant.com/news/Press+Release%3A+Mike+Thompson+Leads+174+Members+Calling+on+DOJ+to+Enforce+Youth+Handgun+Law
- http://mikethompson.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/gun-violence-prevention-task-force-chair-thompson-judiciary-committee
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