Federal Judge Upholds MA Gun Ban for Adults Under 21

When is someone an adult?

The current age of majority in the United States is 18. This is, traditionally speaking, when someone is considered an adult in the eyes of the law. Despite having had their rights all their lives, they can now legally exercise their Second Amendment rights…unless they live in a handful of states that have decided they can’t really have them and they’re not really adults.

Like Massachusetts.

Unfortunately for the adults under the age of 21, it looks like they got a bit of a setback in federal court on Friday.

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.

…

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.”

The problem with this argument is, as I understand it, the age of majority was different at the time. It was much higher, with the voting age also being 21 at the time. Until then, people still answered to their parents for everything.

So, with that in mind, to say that this is consistent is absolute nonsense when taken in context with those earlier regulations.

And let’s get into O’Toole’s argument that “the argument conflates regulation with relegation.” I counter that with “a right delayed is a right denied.”

If relegation is somehow acceptable and not regulation, then what is to stop people from exercising all measures to delay people exercising their civil liberties? What if government officials decide to delay protest permits until after an election to decide on a controversial topic? Is relegation the same as regulation then?

I honestly find that so-called argument genuinely offensive.

And honestly, we all should, because there are so many ways that such nonsense can be twisted and used to have a real impact on civil liberties.

The Second Amendment is, most definitely, treated as a second-class right. It’s treated like that because, as is true of so many gun control laws, it’s deemed acceptable to delay or even deny that right for even non-felony charges, to decide legal adults who are capable of making life-altering decisions on their own every day cannot exercise the right to keep and bear arms.

If they were still considered children in the eyes of the law, then maybe O’Toole would have a point.

Instead, what he’s done is rationalize himself into something that vaguely resembles a legal argument rather than looking at the facts of the case.

The one upside here is that each step in this challenge moves it closer to a Supreme Court decision that will, hopefully, put an end to this particular flavor of absolute stupidity.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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