Key Takeaways
- The DOJ announced that the federal ban on licensed dealers selling handguns to 18-to-20-year-olds is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
- They concluded that 18-to-20-year-olds are included among ‘the people’ protected by the Second Amendment, similar to voting and jury duty.
- The regulations burden members of the political community and lack historical tradition backing the restriction on sales to this age group.
- While the opinion affects criminal penalties on dealers, it does not repeal existing laws or address state laws on carrying firearms.
- Dealers might be hesitant to proceed with sales to younger adults due to the change resting on DOJ’s opinion rather than legislative amendment.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
WASHINGTON, DC — The Department of Justice announced Friday, September 18, 2026, that its Office of Legal Counsel has concluded the federal ban on licensed dealers selling handguns to 18-to-20-year-olds is inconsistent with the Second Amendment and cannot be enforced to impose criminal penalties on those dealers.
According to the department’s press release, the opinion covers 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1) and (c)(1), the two provisions that generally prohibit federally licensed dealers from selling handguns or handgun ammunition to anyone under 21. DOJ says the Office of Legal Counsel found those statutes inconsistent with the Second Amendment as the Supreme Court has read it in District of Columbia v. Heller, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, and later decisions including Wolford v. Lopez. The opinion itself was not available for review at the time of writing; this account rests on the department’s own description of what it concluded.
The release says the Office of Legal Counsel determined that 18-to-20-year-olds are among “the people” the Second Amendment protects. “Eighteen-year-olds may vote, serve on juries, be drafted, and face adult criminal penalties, including capital punishment,” Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser of the Office of Legal Counsel said in the release. “The Constitution protects the people’s right to keep and bear arms. The Department of Justice may not constitutionally seek to impose criminal penalties on dealers who sell handguns to law-abiding adults who, in nearly every other relevant respect, are members of the political community.”
From there, the release walks the Bruen path. Because the restrictions burden the ability of members of “the people” to acquire commonly used arms, DOJ says they fall within the amendment’s plain text and are presumptively unconstitutional, meaning the burden shifts to the government to justify them. The department says the Office of Legal Counsel found no Founding-era history or tradition of barring legal adults from buying firearms to protect public safety. To the contrary, DOJ says, militia statutes of that period overwhelmingly required service beginning at 18 and required enrollees to furnish their own arms. Under Bruen, that is the whole test: if the conduct is covered by the text, the government has to show the restriction fits the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, and the department says it could not find that tradition here.
Read the scope carefully. An Office of Legal Counsel opinion is the executive branch telling its own prosecutors how to read the law. DOJ’s release says the two sections may not be enforced to impose criminal penalties on dealers who sell handguns to law-abiding adults in that age group. It does not repeal 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1) or (c)(1); only Congress can do that. It does not bind a court. And it says nothing about state law. Buying a handgun and carrying one are separate questions, and carry remains a state-by-state matter, so an 18-to-20-year-old should start with my concealed carry permit information by state before assuming anything changed on that front.
There is a practical wrinkle for dealers, too. The statute is still on the books, and an opinion issued by one Attorney General can be withdrawn by the next. A dealer weighing whether to complete a sale to a 19-year-old is being asked to rely on a prosecutorial judgment rather than a change in the law itself. Some will. Some will wait for a court or Congress to make it permanent.
This is not the department’s first move in this direction. In January, NRA-ILA reported that the Office of Legal Counsel had determined the 1927 prohibition on mailing handguns violates the Second Amendment. In April, the Second Amendment Foundation’s Adam Kraut attended the announcement of 34 proposed and final ATF rules by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and ATF Director Robert Cekada, and said afterward it was “refreshing to hear Acting Attorney General Blanche state that the Second Amendment will no longer be treated as a second-class right under the current administration.” Friday’s opinion goes a step beyond rule changes. It is the department saying a criminal statute on the books cannot constitutionally be used against the people it targets.
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My view is that the age line the release attacks never made much sense from a training and mindset standpoint. The adults in that window are the same ones the country trusts with a rifle in uniform and with a ballot at home. Where they can lawfully buy a handgun, the responsibility to train with it and to carry it with a defensive mindset does not get lighter because they are young. If anything, it gets heavier.
I will continue tracking how ATF and licensed dealers respond to the opinion, whether any court weighs in on it, and what the full opinion says once I have reviewed it.
