In its tenth court action in support of young adult Americans, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) on May 18 filed a lawsuit challenging Connecticut’s law banning young adults who are 18, 19 and 20 years old from purchasing, owning or carrying handguns.
The lawsuit, Succow v. Bondi, argues that age-based gun bans violate the Second Amendment rights of lawful adults who are under 21 years of age. The Connecticut Citizens Defense League (CCDL) and two individuals, Samuel Towne and Zachary Succow, are also plaintiffs in the action.
The complaint argues that states can’t simply deprive 18-, 19- and 20-year-old citizens of one constitutionally protected right while recognizing them as adults as far as other rights are concerned.
“The Heller Court has explicitly recognized the handgun as ‘the quintessential self-defense weapon’ in the United States, and that a complete prohibition on their carry and use is necessarily invalid,” the complaint explains. “But Defendants’ laws … and the related regulations, policies, practices, customs designed to implement the same, and Defendants’ continuing enforcement of them, prevent law-abiding, responsible adult citizens under age twenty-one— including Plaintiffs Succow and Towne, and the similarly situated members of Connecticut Citizens Defense League and the Second Amendment Foundation—from doing so, in violation of the Second and Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The complaint also argues that such age-based bans don’t meet the historical precedent requirement set forth in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen ruling.
“There is simply no historical analogue prohibiting adults under 21 from purchasing, acquiring, possessing or carrying handguns nor of banning otherwise lawful commerce between firearm dealers and adults under 21,” the complaint states.
In summarizing the defendants’ arguments, the brief states: “No colonial or Founding Era law restricted the right of law-abiding adults under the age of twenty-one to acquire or possess arms purely based on age. There is and never has been any constitutionally grounded basis for restricting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Thus, the statutory and regulatory provisions that comprise the Connecticut handgun ban are unconstitutional on their face and as-applied to the law-abiding Plaintiffs in this case.”
Ultimately, Defendants are asking the court to make a declaratory judgment that the provisions of the law are unconstitutional on their face and as applied to the plaintiffs and to issue a permanent injunction enjoining all law enforcement in the state from enforcing provisions of the law.
SAF Founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb said his organization is dedicated to fighting this injustice against adults under 21 years of age anywhere such laws are passed.
“This makes 10 lawsuits SAF has filed across the country on behalf of adults in this age group,” Gottlieb said in a news release announcing the action. “And in each of those lawsuits the premise remains the same—depriving adults who are 18-20 years old of their constitutional rights is illegal, full stop.”
