A law in the Bay State effectively prohibiting 18-to-20-year-olds from possessing common firearms is unconstitutional and must be overturned, according to a lawsuit filed by the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment advocacy groups.
The lawsuit filed late last week in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts asks the court to throw out An Act Modernizing Firearm Laws, otherwise known as H.B. 4885, over a provision that restricts access to semiautomatic firearms and pistols to just those old enough to secure a License To Carry.
“Massachusetts’s expected justification for so severely restricting the rights of 18-to-20-year-olds is their age. But 18-to-20-year-olds are adults. Yet Massachusetts nevertheless accords them no more autonomy in this area than a 15-year-old child with a note from his parents,” the lawsuit reads, in part. “This justification has no basis in either the text of the Second Amendment or our nation’s history. As a textual matter, the Second Amendment protects the rights of ‘the people’ without respect to age.”
Signed into law last year, according to the lawmakers behind it H.B. 4885 represented the most significant update to the state’s firearms regulations in decades and came in part as a response to calls for new gun rules from law enforcement officials who reported a growing threat from unserialized, made-at-home firearms.
Lawmakers were also reacting to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which the high court ruled that any state laws requiring extraordinary processes in order to exercise Second Amendment guaranteed rights were at odds with the U.S. Constitution.
The court’s decision meant licensing laws in Massachusetts had to be updated. The resulting state law, according to gun rights groups, went so far afield as to be unlawful.
“Law-abiding 18-to-20-year-old citizens of the Commonwealth,” the groups told the court, “have an enumerated right to keep and bear common firearms for defense of self and family and for other lawful pursuits.”
Under H.B. 4885, however, “Massachusetts has enacted, and Defendants have authority to enforce, wide-ranging restrictions on that right,” which in effect “bans purchasing, possessing, or carrying any handgun or semiautomatic firearm whatsoever.”
The way the law is written, the groups told the court, an 18-to-20-year-old adult is only permitted access to a Firearms Identification Card and not the License To Carry available to those over the age of 21. A Firearms Identification Card, the groups write, “does not permit its holder to purchase, possess, or transfer any handguns orsemiautomatic firearms.”
This means, they contend, that the states gun laws “prohibit law-abiding adults who are protected by the Second Amendment from possessing common arms that are protected by the Second Amendment.”
The lawsuit names as defendants Colonel Geoffrey Noble, in his official capacity as Superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, Jamie Gagnon, in his official capacity as Commissioner of the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services, and Heath J. Eldredge, in his official capacity as the Chief of Police of Brewster and the local licensing authority.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Mack Escher, identified in court records as a resident of Brewster and an “adult over the age of 18 but under 21, a citizen of the United States, and legally eligible under federal and state law to possess and acquire firearms.”
According to the lawsuit, “Escher is a member of each of the organizational Plaintiffs,” who are identified as the Gun Owners’ Action League, Commonwealth Second Amendment, Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, and the NRA.
Escher, the groups tell the court, was able to use his father’s semiautomatic rifle for hunting in the past, but the change in the law means his currently issued Firearms Identification Card wouldn’t cover that activity. Beyond that, they write, he’s unable to “purchase or possess any handgun or semiautomatic firearm, or to carry a handgun inpublic for self-defense,” despite the Supreme Court’s decisions indicating he should be able to do just that.
“Escher would, but for the laws at issue in this case and Defendants’ enforcement of the same, acquire a license to carry and then acquire and carry a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic handgun for self-defense, and acquire and possess a semiautomatic rifle chambered in 5.56mm for hunting and target shooting,” they wrote.
John Commerford, the executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement that the Bay State’s legislative response to the high court’s decision in Bruen represents “one of the most severe attacks on the right to keep and bear arms in our nation’s history.”
“Vindicating the rights of young adults is just our first step towards dismantling this unconstitutional law,” Commerford said.
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Source: American Military News
