Key Takeaways
- A federal judge upheld Massachusetts law banning 18- to 20-year-olds from possessing handguns and semiautomatic firearms.
- The ruling, issued in Escher v. Noble, rejected a constitutional challenge from plaintiffs including the NRA and other gun rights groups.
- Judge O’Toole argued that historical context supports state restrictions on minors’ firearm possession while noting plaintiffs lacked standing on most challenges.
- This decision adds to a pattern where courts uphold under-21 restrictions, despite 18-year-olds being considered adults in other areas.
- Meanwhile, some states have moved to allow concealed carry for younger adults, highlighting a divide in state responses to gun rights.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
BOSTON, MA — A federal judge has upheld the Massachusetts law barring 18- to 20-year-olds from possessing handguns and semiautomatic firearms, rejecting a constitutional challenge brought by a 20-year-old resident and a coalition of gun rights organizations that included the National Rifle Association, the Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America and the Firearms Policy Coalition.
Judge George O’Toole issued the ruling in Escher v. Noble, No. 1:25-cv-10389, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, as reported by Bloomberg Law.
The case was filed in February 2025. According to the Second Amendment Foundation’s announcement, the plaintiffs are Massachusetts resident Mack Escher along with SAF, the NRA, Gun Owners of America, the Firearms Policy Coalition, Gun Owners Action League and Commonwealth Second Amendment. SAF identifies the defendants as Col. Geoffrey Noble, superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, and Heath J. Eldredge, chief of police in Brewster, both in their official capacities. The plaintiffs challenged provisions enacted through H.B. 4885, signed in July 2024 by Gov. Maura Healey, which SAF describes as a complete bar on 18- to 20-year-olds acquiring, possessing or carrying any handgun or semiautomatic firearm.
“Massachusetts’s law barring 18-20-year-olds from being able to acquire, possess, and carry commonly possessed firearms fails to comport with the Constitution’s command,” SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said when the suit was filed. “These adult individuals are entitled to the full scope of the Second Amendment’s protections, yet the State has opted to affirmatively treat them as if they have less rights.”
GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt put it more bluntly in his organization’s release. “The government has no right to pick and choose which Americans can exercise their Second Amendment rights,” Pratt said. “Massachusetts’ unconstitutional ban on young adults owning firearms for self-defense is an egregious attack on the rights of law-abiding citizens.”
Per Bloomberg Law’s report, the challenge leaned heavily on the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which requires a gun regulation to be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The plaintiffs argued the age cutoff turned the Second Amendment into a “second-class right.” O’Toole rejected that framing, writing that “that argument conflates regulation with relegation.”
The historical hook O’Toole reportedly used is the infancy doctrine, a founding-era legal concept dealing with the limited legal capacity of people below the age of majority. Bloomberg Law reports that state officials argued the doctrine made it practically impossible for anyone under 21 to acquire firearms in that era, and pointed to founding-era statutes requiring parents and guardians to furnish arms to minors serving in the militia, some of which imposed fines when they failed to do so. “The historical record before the Court reveals that the ‘pre-existing right’ ‘codif[ied]’ by the Second Amendment” allowed for restrictions on minors’ ability to possess firearms, O’Toole wrote, according to Bloomberg Law. “The statutory age restriction fits within that principle … in both why and how it burdens the Second Amendment right of eighteen- to twenty-year-olds.”
He was not writing on a blank slate. The ruling cited the Eleventh Circuit’s 2025 en banc decision upholding Florida’s ban on firearm sales to people under 21, en banc meaning the full bench of that appeals court reheard the case rather than the usual three-judge panel. It also cited a Tenth Circuit decision upholding a Colorado under-21 ban, which found that the age of majority at the founding was 21 in most states.
There is a second holding here that matters just as much as the historical analysis. O’Toole also found that the plaintiffs lacked standing on three of the four provisions they challenged. Standing is the requirement that a plaintiff show a concrete, personal injury from the specific law he is attacking, and if a court finds it missing, it never reaches the question of whether the law is constitutional. That narrowed the case down to a single statute, the one setting 21 as the minimum age for a Massachusetts license to carry.
So three quarters of what the plaintiffs came in to fight was never decided on the merits at all. The bulk of the Massachusetts scheme those plaintiffs targeted is still standing untested, and a different plaintiff with a cleaner injury could put it back in front of a judge.
On the merits that were reached, though, this is one more district court adding to a post-Bruen pattern I have watched build for two years now. Two federal appeals courts have already signed off on under-21 restrictions using the same founding-era reasoning, and a district judge in Boston has now followed them. An 18-year-old in Massachusetts is an adult for voting, for contracts, for military service and for criminal liability, and courts keep locating a historical tradition that says the one right he does not get is the one written into the Bill of Rights.
Legislatures have been moving the other way all year. In the spring I covered the Kentucky legislature overriding the governor’s veto so that 18- to 20-year-olds can get concealed carry licenses starting July 15. West Virginia went further, and I reported that adults 18 and older could carry concealed there without a license starting June 12, then followed up once that law was in force. Same age group, same constitutional question, opposite answers. Which rights a 19-year-old has right now comes down to which state line he happens to be standing behind.
More from USA Carry:
This is a district court decision, not the last word. The First Circuit sits above the District of Massachusetts.
I will continue tracking Escher v. Noble as it moves forward.
