The Department of Justice has announced that it will no longer seek criminal penalties against federally licensed firearm dealers for selling handguns to otherwise law-abiding adults between the ages of 18 and 20. DOJ publicly announced the opinion on September 18.
The change does not come from Congress or a new Supreme Court decision directly striking down the statute. Instead, DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that applying 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(b)(1) and 922(c)(1) to those transactions violates the Second Amendment and that the Department therefore may not criminally enforce those provisions.
That distinction matters. The statutes remain in the United States Code. But the federal agency responsible for prosecuting violations has now concluded that a defined category of conduct Congress criminalized cannot constitutionally be prosecuted.
Section 922(b)(1) generally prohibits a federally licensed dealer from selling a firearm or ammunition to someone under 18 and separately prevents dealers from selling handguns and handgun ammunition to individuals under 21. Section 922(c)(1) imposes a related age requirement on certain transactions where the purchaser does not appear personally at the dealer’s premises. A willful violation can carry criminal penalties of up to five years in prison, in addition to licensing consequences.
DOJ’s new position applies only to the portion of those provisions prohibiting handgun sales to otherwise law-abiding adults ages 18 through 20.
The Office of Legal Counsel analyzed the restriction under the Supreme Court’s modern Second Amendment framework. First, OLC concluded that 18-to-20-year-olds are part of “the people” protected by the Second Amendment. It emphasized that federal law generally treats an 18-year-old as an adult for voting, military service, jury service, criminal responsibility, and numerous other purposes. And handguns, of course, fall squarely within the category of arms ordinarily possessed for lawful self-defense.
That shifted the burden to the government to identify a historical tradition sufficiently analogous to the modern restriction.
OLC concluded that it could not. The opinion considered historical rules governing minors, including doctrines allowing minors to void contracts and nineteenth-century restrictions on furnishing weapons to minors. But it found those analogues insufficient under the Supreme Court’s recent decisions applying Bruen. Among other things, OLC reasoned that historical rules governing legal minors served different purposes and operated differently from a modern criminal prohibition directed at adults between 18 and 20.
OLC ultimately concluded that §§ 922(b)(1) and (c)(1) cannot constitutionally be used to impose criminal penalties on dealers who sell handguns to otherwise law-abiding adults in that age group. DOJ did not conclude that every federal age restriction involving firearms is unconstitutional, expressly recognizing that the opinion was not addressing the prohibition on handgun possession by persons under 18, age-neutral conditions on commercial sales, enhanced investigative procedures applicable to purchasers under 21, or the separate prohibited-person provisions in § 922(g).