Minnesota attorney general seeks to restore state ban on people under 21 carrying guns

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison asked a federal appeals court on Tuesday to consider restoring a state law that bans people ages 18 to 20 from getting permits to carry guns in public.

In a petition for rehearing with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, Ellison asked the full court to review a ruling earlier this month by a three-judge panel affirming a lower court decision that Minnesota’s law is unconstitutional. The lower court sided with the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, which sued to overturn the law, and concluded the Second Amendment guarantees the rights of young adults to bear arms for self-defense.

Ellison argued the panel failed to consider the impact of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June to upholding a federal gun control law that is intended to protect victims of domestic violence.

“I believe the court erred earlier this month in ruling that the Second Amendment requires Minnesota to allow open carry by youth as young as 18,” Ellison said in a written statement. “Respectfully, I believe the court reached the wrong conclusion on the facts and the history, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s recent, common-sense decision to uphold a federal law criminalizing gun possession by domestic abusers.”

In the July decision Ellison is challenging, the three-judge appeals court panel cited a 2022 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that expanded gun rights.

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That decision led U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez to reluctantly strike down the Minnesota law in March 2023. She also granted the state’s emergency motion for a stay, keeping the ban in place until the state’s appeal could be resolved.

Her ruling was an example of how the 2022 Supreme Court case, known as the Bruen decision, upended gun laws nationwide, dividing courts and sowing confusion over what restrictions can remain in force.

The Bruen decision, which was the conservative-led high court’s biggest gun ruling in more than a decade, held that Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. And it established a new test for evaluating challenges to gun restrictions, saying courts must now ask whether restrictions are consistent with the country’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

In his petition, Ellison requested that all the judges of the 8th Circuit, rather than a three-judge panel, rehear the case. He said said many other states have laws similar to the one Minnesota tried to enact.

Minnesota had argued that Second Amendment protections should not apply to 18- to-20-year-olds, even if they’re law-abiding. The state also said people under the age of 21 aren’t competent to make responsible decisions about guns, and that they pose a danger to themselves and others as a result.

But the appeals court said the plain text of the Second Amendment does not set an age limit, so ordinary, law-abiding young adults are presumed to be protected. And it said crime statistics provided by the state for the case don’t justify a conclusion that 18- to 20-year-olds who are otherwise eligible for carry permits present an unacceptable risk of danger.