“We are pleased that the [federal] Third Circuit [Court of Appeals in Philadelphia] followed the framework established by the Supreme Court in Bruen and recognized that 18-to-20-year-old adults have a Second Amendment right to protect themselves and their families in public, even—indeed, especially—in states of emergency,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney John Ohlendorf of Cooper & Kirk, in Washington, D.C. who represented three teens and the gun rights organizations Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition. - by Riley Brennan, The Legal Intelligencer, January 19, 2024
Ohlendorf represented the victorious appellants in Lara, et al. v. Commissioner, Pennsylvania State Police. The Circuit Court now operates under the constraints of Bruen v. New York State Rifle and Pistol Ass'n. The high court there - in an opinion by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas - ruled that once conduct is constrained by a gun control measure the state must show that the nation's historical traditions support such limitation on the personal right to bear arms for self defense.
Absent from the high court's calculus is public health data showing, for example, that an American teenager took their life with a firearm every seven hours on average between 2019 and 2020. Instead the hypothetical on which the Supreme Court built its case is the obligation of independence era young men to serve in a militia - a time when there remained threats of invasion and the indigenous peoples had not yet been vanquished.
In Lara the majority turns to the Second Militia Act of 1792. Second Militia Act of 1792 § 1, 1 Stat. 271 (1792). In that measure Congress declared every white man between 18 and 45 must enroll in the militia. Every man thus enrolled was required to "provide himself with a good musket or firelock ... or with a good rifle[.]" The Court struck the Pennsylvania law despite the fact that the circumstances of 1792 - a society which had not yet seized control from its indigenous peoples, and for whom French and British power ruled, unreconciled, in the north and east.
Absent in the Bruen decision is any recognition of the common good as a constraint on personal liberty. The Bruen court ruled that once a gun owner's conduct is constrained by law only a historic pattern of such control can justify the restraint on personal liberty to possess a firearm. But even under that framework Circuit Judge Restrepo in dissent pointed out that plaintiffs' conduct was not at issue but rather their age. Yet even accepting the Bruen frame Restrepo points out that at the time men were legally infants until age 21 and that "the fact that infants had a duty under the Second Militia Act to enroll in the militia and thus to equip themselves with arms for that purpose should not be confused with such individuals otherwise having an independent right under the Second Amendment." Indeed, Restrepo notes, colleges stood in loco parentis and barred students from possessing firearms on college grounds.
Declaring that teens have a constitutional right to arm themselves with pistols or rifles of their choosing - is an embrace of anarchy that has brought us another step closer to returning to what Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651) described as the state of nature:
Out Of Civil States, There Is Alwayes Warre Of Every One Against Every One
Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man.
Right Of Nature What
The RIGHT OF NATURE, which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale, is the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.
Liberty What
By LIBERTY, is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of externall Impediments: which Impediments, may oft take away part of a mans power to do what hee would; but cannot hinder him from using the power left him, according as his judgement, and reason shall dictate to him.
3rd Circuit Rules Statutes Prohibiting 18- to 20-Year-Olds From Carrying Firearms Are Unconstitutional | New Jersey Law Journal
In a matter of first impression, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit addressed whether 18- to 20-year-olds are included among “the people” protected by the Second Amendment.
In a Jan. 18 opinion, in Lara, et al. v. Commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police the panel sided (2-1) with a group of 18- to 20-year-olds who sued the State Police to stop the enforcement of statutes that ban members of their age group from carrying firearms outside their homes during a state of emergency.
The ruling marks a win for Washington, D.C., boutique litigation firm Cooper & Kirk, which represents the plaintiffs.
While the district court dismissed the case, the Third Circuit reversed and remanded the decision, saying they do not know of a founding-era law that supports disarming people in that age group.
According to the opinion authored by Judge Kent A. Jordan, under Sections 6106(a) and 6109(b) of the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act of 1995 (UFA), “an individual may not carry a concealed firearm without a license and must be at least 21 years old to apply for a license,” with a concealed-carry license permitting “the holder to carry a firearm even during a state of emergency.”
While Pennsylvania residents without a concealed-carry license can ordinarily carry openly, the court noted that § 6107(a) of the UFA provides that “no person shall carry a firearm upon public streets or upon any public property during an emergency proclaimed by a state or municipal governmental executive.”
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