Federal Judge Strikes Down Texas’ Ban on Handgun Carry by Young Adult
FORT WORTH, TX – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced a victory in
Andrews v. McCraw, its Second Amendment lawsuit that challenged a ban on handgun carry by young adults in the State of Texas. The judgment and injunction can be viewed at
FPCLaw.org.
“The issue is whether
prohibiting law-abiding 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying a handgun in public for self-defense is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm
regulation,” wrote Judge Mark Pittman in his Opinion. “Based on the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by Founding-Era history and tradition, the Court concludes that the Second Amendment protects against this prohibition. Texas’s statutory scheme must therefore be enjoined to the extent that law-abiding 18-to-20-year-olds are prohibited from applying for a license to carry a handgun.”
“Texas cannot point to a single Founding Era law that prohibited 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying a functional firearm for self-defense, because not only did no such law exist, but those individuals are an important reason why we have a Bill of Rights in the first place,” said FPC Senior Attorney for Constitutional Litigation, Cody J. Wisniewski. “The typical age of individuals that went to war with the British for our Independence was between 17 and 20 years old. And young people have just as much a right to keep and bear arms in public as adults over the age of 21. This decision is a significant victory for the rights of young adults in Texas and demonstrates for the rest of the nation that similar bans cannot withstand constitutional challenges grounded in history, as
Bruen and
Heller require. We look forward to restoring the right to keep and bear arms throughout the United States in the coming months and years.”
In order to allow Texas time to appeal and seek a stay, the trial court stayed the injunction for 30 days. “Though Plaintiffs’ interest in the vindication of their Constitutional rights suffers while the judgment is stayed, the stay is necessary to militate the possible negative effects of relying on the injunction while it is subject to appellate review and possible reversal,” the Court said. As such, young adults in Texas under age 21 should not carry handguns in public under this decision until the injunction takes effect. FPC will continue to provide updates on this case at
FPCLaw.org and on social media.
The judgment in
Andrews is likely the first final judgment on the merits in favor of Second Amendment rights since the Supreme Court’s decision in
NYSRPA v. Bruen this June. The plaintiffs in this case were represented by David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson, and William V. Bergstrom of Cooper & Kirk, who are representing FPC and individual gun owners in multiple other legal cases, as well as Texas counsel R. Brent Cooper of Cooper & Scully, P.C.
