Ohio Bill Wants to Supercede Federal Law, Allow Handgun Sales for Adults Under 21

Adults under the age of 21 can already get handguns. They just can’t buy them from licensed dealers. Yes, this is nonsense. I vehemently oppose this, but it’s still the law, and unless the courts rule against it, I don’t see that changing any time soon.

However, in Ohio, a new bill hopes to address this.

It wants to legalize handgun sales for adults under 21, and not just in some face-to-face transfers between law-abiding adults. Oh no, it wants to allow them at neighborhood gun stores.

Now, pro-gun lawmakers in Ohio are pushing forward with a plan to recognize the right to keep and bear arms for adults under 21 years of age. The proposal aims to lower the age requirement for purchasing a handgun from 21 to 18.

According to a report at local12.com, Republican senators are advocating for the bill, which would allow individuals aged 18 to 21 to purchase handguns from federally licensed dealers, provided they pass a background check.

Senate Bill 303, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Terry Johnson and backed by Buckeye Firearms Association (BFA), was introduced Oct. 21. In a new item published on its website, BFA explained that the measure is a preemptive move that would allow adults ages 18 to 20 to purchase a handgun from a federally licensed retailer, aligning state law with a possible favorable Supreme Court ruling striking down restrictions.

As Dean Reick, BFA executive director, explained, passage of the law would not mean that it would trump existing federal law.

“While Sen. Jonson’s bill will not change federal law, it will prepare Ohio for the coming Supreme Court challenge to change the law regarding handgun purchases for those 18 to 20 years old,” Reick said.

And that’s really all it can do.

As it stands, regardless of what Ohio decides, licensed gun dealers are going to follow federal law. Failure to do so would result in the revocation of their FFL, which no gun dealer wants. It was bad enough when paperwork errors could get it yanked, but to do something you know the ATF isn’t going to be appreciative of? Yeah, we all know how that would go.

It’s not going to happen until or unless the Supreme Court overturns the federal prohibition.

In that regard, this is fine. It’s not anything significant right now because of that federal law, though I can hear the anti-gunners bellowing hysterically just the same.

However, should the Court do what I hope it will do, then this law will likely be something of a game-changer for adults under 21 in Ohio.

The moment such a decision is handed down, there would be pretty much nothing stopping those kinds of handgun sales in Ohio, as would also be the case in states that either follow suit or those that have no state-level prohibition in the first place.

Then again, depending on how the Supreme Court words its decision, this might turn out to be unnecessary since the ruling could override even state prohibitions.

That would be awesome, but we’ll have to wait and see, unfortunately. It won’t happen in the immediate future.

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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