After a U.S. District judge ruled in March that Minnesota’s ban on issuing concealed carry permits to adults 18-, 19- and 20-years old was unconstitutional and a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld that ruling last month, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison still isn’t satisfied with allowing young adults their Second Amendment rights.
On July 30, Ellison petitioned for a rehearing by the full 8th Circuit Court in the case Worth v. Jacobson, in which plaintiffs argue that such a ban is a violation of the constitutional rights of adults 18 to 20 years old.
“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.”
Ellison also takes issue with the fact that the district court and the 8th Circuit used the new standards for deciding Second Amendment cases created in the 2022 Supreme Court Bruen decision in ruling against the state on the matter.
“Minnesota has not met its burden to proffer sufficient evidence to rebut presumptions that 18 to 20-year-olds seeking to carry handguns in public for self-defense are protected by the right to keep and bear arms,” the earlier 8th Circuit ruling stated. “The Carry Ban violates the Second Amendment as applied to Minnesota through the Fourteenth Amendment, and, thus, is unconstitutional.”
The circuit court also used the second requirement of the Bruen ruling in determining whether there was a historical precedent for such a ban.
“Minnesota did not proffer an analogue that meets the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the Carry Ban for 18 to 20-year-old Minnesotans,” the opinion stated. “The only proffered evidence that was both not entirely based on one’s status as a minor and not entirely removed from burdening carry—Indiana’s 1875 statute—is not sufficient to demonstrate that the Carry Ban is within this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
In the earlier opinion, the court also quoted significant points made in the Supreme Court’s 2010 McDonald v. Chicago decision.
“A legislature’s ability to deem a category of people dangerous based only on belief would subjugate the right to bear arms ‘in public for self-defense’ to ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,’” that ruling stated.
The lawsuit was filed by three gun rights organizations—the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus—through their members Kristin Worth, Austin Dye, Alex Anderson and Joe Knudsen.
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