Delaware Court Strikes Down Age Limit for Gun Sales

There’s a semantical argument that a law prohibiting the purchase of a particular item, but not the ownership, isn’t really a ban. Especially if other people can still lawfully purchase said item and just give it to those others.

Of course, if that’s the case, then why have a law banning some people from buying some given item at all?

For age limits on long gun sales, this is made even more of an issue because this is a country that has a Second Amendment. Further, many states have something in their state constitutions that similarly protects the right to keep and bear arms, even as many anti-gunners seek to ignore both constitutions.

In Delaware, which isn’t exactly what anyone thinks of as a pro-gun state, gun control advocates got kicked in the teeth last week by a state court.

A judge ruled last week that a Delaware law tightening gun regulations for residents under the age of 21 violates the state Constitution.

House Bill 451, which was signed into law in 2022 by former Gov. John Carney but just went into effect in July, raised the minimum age to purchase a gun in Delaware from 18 to 21. 

The law also created adult supervision requirements for residents under the age of 21 while hunting in the state, drawing pushback from hunters as well as Republican lawmakers. 

The Kent County Superior Court’s ruling, however, struck down the legislation’s age requirements on the grounds that they infringe upon 18-to-20-year old Delawareans’ constitutional right to self-defense.

For hunters and gun rights advocates, the legal victory came just in time for the 2025 hunting season, which officially began on Sept. 1. Gun violence prevention advocates, though, view the decision as a setback in their attempts to create more stringent gun laws in Delaware. 

“It’s frustrating that in a population that has a lot of statistical risk factors, the courts are saying, ‘Let’s let them have unfettered access to firearms,’” Coalition for a Safer Delaware executive director Traci Manza Murphy said. 

Honestly, everything about this law was stupid and went way too far.

Adult supervision for adults who are hunting? Are you freaking kidding me?

As for Murphy’s statement, allow me to rip that stupidity to shreds.

First, there won’t be “unfettered access” to guns. There’s a federal prohibition on handguns for those under 21, which was untouched by the ruling. Second of all, there will still be all of the restrictions on gun sales that currently exist, including universal background checks. This is also a state that has already banned so-called assault weapons.

In other words, if one believes gun control works as advertised, then the weapons most likely to be misused by this particular population are all still prohibited. What’s left are more traditional rifles and shotguns.

Which they could still own lawfully even with the law in place.

So why, again, was such a law necessary? The answer is that it wasn’t. It was just another step in turning up the heat slowly so the frog doesn’t know he’s boiling.

Delaware will probably appeal the ruling, which is a shame, but I hope the next court sees reason and justice and keeps slapping them down.

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment. 

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