The Department of Justice issued its own ruling that adults under 21 should be able to buy handguns. I doubt any gun store will complete such a transaction, in part because it’s likely to come back and bite them on the keister down the road if they do. Still, it was the DOJ’s finding, and while some are outraged over the perceived overreach, I don’t see it as anything of the sort.
But one outcome we get is an official from Brady trying to twist history to make the case that the ban is, in fact, historical.
Under Bruen, gun regulations must be consistent with the nation’s tradition of gun regulations. Because younger adults in the founding era served in armed militias, the OLC memo says, there’s no valid historical precedent to barring handgun sales to adults younger than 21.
But that legal analysis is a “complete intellectual mess,” said Douglas Letter, chief legal officer at Brady United Against Gun Violence.
An 18-year-old in a militia was subject to military discipline, he said, a situation that simply isn’t analogous to that of a modern civilian teenager. Gun crimes, including mass murders, are disproportionately committed by younger people, he said.
“Any rational society, any rational lawmaking, you do not want people in this age cohort to have guns,” he said. The memo argues, Letter said, “our constitution nevertheless should be read and should impose on our democratically elected representatives that they are not allowed to do that kind of reasonable decision making. Even though the data is staring them in the face, they have to ignore it.”
The only “complete intellectual mess” is to argue that because the militia had some level of military discipline, 18-year-olds weren’t really trusted with firearms at the time.
Militia duty only constituted a small period of time overall. The laws of the time didn’t preclude an 18-year-old from owning a gun for the other 99 percent of his life that wasn’t in service to the militia. Trying to present militia duty as somehow the only time someone owned a firearm, much less carried it, is the epitome of a “complete intellectual mess.”
Then again, Letter makes the claim that a rational society wouldn’t allow these adults to own guns, while I personally argue that a rational society would understand that someone is either an adult or they’re not. You don’t keep adding graduating degrees of adulthood. Once they’re old enough to vote for our nation’s leaders and to serve defending this nation in uniform, they’re old enough to be trusted with the totality of their rights. That includes owning guns.
It should also be noted that the younger people Letter notes are already committing crimes with handguns. The only people disarmed are those who clearly can be trusted with them.
This piece had a lot I could have chewed on, including a law professor from Georgia State University who thinks the DOJ letter is a big problem, but when I saw this crap from Brady, I just couldn’t let it go.
Letter here is an attorney, which is becoming the theme of the day, at this point.
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