The bottom line
Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice has formally told a federal court that the federal law banning licensed dealers from selling handguns to adults between 18 and 20 years old is constitutional under the Bruen framework. That is not a passive omission or a strategic silence. That is the United States government actively arguing in court that a class of American adults who can vote, sign contracts, serve in the military, and be drafted can be stripped of the core of the Second Amendment right. I’ve defended Bondi repeatedly when critics called her anti-gun. On this one, I can’t.
Attribution from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. Commentary, not legal advice.
What the DOJ actually filed
The case is Succow v. Bondi, a challenge filed in the District of Connecticut by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Connecticut Citizens Defense League on behalf of two 19-year-old Connecticut residents. They cannot legally acquire a handgun anywhere in Connecticut. Federal law under 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1) prohibits federally licensed dealers from selling handguns to anyone under 21. Connecticut state law piles on with its own restrictions. The combined effect is that 18-to-20-year-old adults in Connecticut have their Second Amendment rights effectively nullified when it comes to handguns, which are the most common and historically significant arms for personal self-defense.
The DOJ filed a brief in that case taking the position that § 922(b)(1) survives constitutional scrutiny under the Bruen framework. The key language from the brief, according to the government’s own filing, states that “the restrictions at issue here stand solidly within our nation’s history and tradition which has greatly restricted the rights of those under the age of 21.” They are using Bruen’s own text-and-history test to argue the opposite of what Bruen’s logic demands.
This is not a case where the DOJ is sitting on the sidelines. They are not abstaining to let the courts work it out. They walked into that courtroom and told the judge that 18-to-20-year-olds historically lacked Second Amendment protection, and that the federal handgun purchase ban is therefore constitutional. That argument is wrong on the facts, wrong on the law, and wrong on the history.
Why the DOJ’s historical argument falls apart
The Bruen test requires the government to demonstrate that a modern restriction is consistent with the historical tradition of firearm regulation at or near the founding. That is the test. Not whether there were some 19th-century statutes. Not whether certain jurisdictions experimented with age restrictions at some point after the Civil War. At or near the founding.
Here is what the historical record actually shows. At the time of the founding, 18-to-20-year-olds were not only permitted to own firearms. They were legally compelled to own them. The Militia Act of 1792, passed just one year after the Second Amendment was ratified, required every free, able-bodied male citizen between the ages of 18 and 45 to provide his own musket, bayonet, ammunition, and related equipment. Congress did not say “except for 18-to-20-year-olds.” It said every able-bodied male. Eighteen-year-olds were expected to show up armed. That is the tradition.
Federal law today still defines the unorganized militia as consisting of able-bodied males between 17 and 45. 18 U.S.C. § 311. The people the DOJ is arguing have no historically rooted right to own a handgun are, by federal statute, members of the militia. You cannot simultaneously classify 18-to-20-year-olds as militia members under one part of federal law and then turn around and argue they have no historical tradition of firearm ownership under another part. That contradiction lives inside the United States Code.
The Fifth Circuit addressed this exact argument in January 2025 when it struck down § 922(b)(1) in Reese v. ATF. The court’s unanimous opinion went through the historical record methodically and found that the government “presented scant evidence” that rights of 18-to-20-year-olds were restricted in any way comparable to a modern handgun purchase ban near the founding. The restrictions the government cited were sparse, late in time, and primarily targeted specific contexts like the antebellum South’s treatment of free Black citizens, which raises additional constitutional problems entirely separate from the Second Amendment. The Fifth Circuit found those sources insufficient. The DOJ’s own brief filed after that Fifth Circuit win is relying on the same discredited historical framework the Fifth Circuit just rejected.
The drinking age comparison doesn’t hold up
People always bring up the 21-year minimum drinking age when this comes up, and the DOJ’s brief implicitly leans on that kind of reasoning. The comparison fails immediately under constitutional analysis. Alcohol consumption is not a fundamental right enumerated in the Constitution. The federal government has already prohibited alcohol for everyone through Prohibition. The Supreme Court has never held that adults have a constitutional right to purchase beer.
The Second Amendment is different. Heller held that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental individual right. Bruen reaffirmed it. You cannot restrict a fundamental constitutional right the way you restrict a commercial activity that has no constitutional protection. The test for a constitutional right is the text and history of the amendment itself, not a general balancing of social interests. And the text of the Second Amendment says “the right of the people.” The people includes 18-year-olds. It has always included them.
There is also the military service argument, which I find even more compelling at a gut level. The federal government trusts an 18-year-old with an M4 carbine, crew-served weapons, and in some career fields, the systems needed to deliver ordnance from aircraft. We send 18-year-olds overseas to shoot, and to be shot at, in the defense of this country. The idea that the same federal government can then turn around and tell that same 18-year-old, upon returning home, that he cannot purchase a Glock from a licensed dealer because he is not yet mature enough to handle a handgun, is not a serious constitutional argument. It is an embarrassment.
What happened in the Reese case makes this worse
Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit struck down § 922(b)(1) in Reese. The DOJ declined to appeal that decision to the Supreme Court, letting the June 2025 deadline pass. On the surface, that looked like a win. The law was struck down, the DOJ didn’t fight it, and dealers in the Fifth Circuit’s jurisdiction could now sell handguns to qualified adults between 18 and 20.
But the practical scope of that win was always limited. The Fifth Circuit covers Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Every other circuit was free to go its own way. And now the DOJ, having declined to defend § 922(b)(1) before the Supreme Court in one circuit, has walked into another federal court and defended it. They are not taking a consistent legal position. They are allowing the law to fall in circuits where it has already been challenged and then propping it up everywhere else. The result is a patchwork country where your Second Amendment rights depend on your zip code, and the DOJ is actively preserving that disparity.
The Second Circuit, which covers New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, is not the Fifth Circuit. It has a significantly different legal culture and has upheld state-level gun restrictions that other circuits would not. For 18-to-20-year-olds in Connecticut, the DOJ just became one more obstacle between them and a right the Fifth Circuit already said they have.
What this means and why I’m not done defending this administration
I want to be clear about what I am and am not saying. I am not saying this administration has been bad for the Second Amendment overall. That is not true. The DOJ stood up the Second Amendment Section inside the Civil Rights Division. It has filed affirmative lawsuits against jurisdictions that violate Bruen. It has filed strong amicus briefs in assault weapons cases. It declined to defend the bump stock ban. There is a real record of pro-2A action here.
But I am not going to tell you this DOJ filing is fine. It isn’t. When the Fifth Circuit handed down Reese in January, it gave the DOJ a roadmap. A unanimous panel of federal judges applied Bruen to § 922(b)(1) and found the law unconstitutional. The DOJ could have adopted that reasoning. It could have conceded the issue in other circuits. It could have filed a brief in Succow agreeing with the plaintiffs. It did none of those things.
Instead, it argued that the historical tradition of the founding era supports restricting handgun access for people who, by the founding era’s own standards, were required to be armed. That argument is not defensible on the history, and it is not consistent with Bruen. I will keep saying so until either the law changes or someone shows me a compelling reason I’m wrong about the history. I have not seen one yet.
Attribution from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. Commentary, not legal advice.
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