# National Rifle Association v. Commissioner, Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement > Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit · March 14, 2025 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/10823293 ## Case - **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit - **Decided:** March 14, 2025 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Opinion - **Nature of suit:** ENB - **Cited by:** 0 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases. - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/10823293 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - explaining both “state law” and “state courts . . . enforcing a substantive common-law rule” are “exertions of state police power” ## Opinion text USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 1 of 169 [PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit ____________________ No. 21-12314 ____________________ NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION, RADFORD FANT, Plaintiffs-Appellants. versus PAM BONDI, In her official capacity as Attorney General of Florida, et al., Defendants, COMMISSIONER, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT, Defendant-Appellee. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 2 of 169 2 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 4:18-cv-00137-MW-MAF ____________________ Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, and JORDAN, ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, NEWSOM, BRANCH, GRANT, LUCK, LAGOA, BRASHER, ABUDU, and WILSON, Circuit Judges.* WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, delivered the opinion of the Court, in which JORDAN, ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, NEWSOM, GRANT, ABUDU, and WILSON, Circuit Judges, joined. ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge, filed a concurring opinion in which JORDAN, Circuit Judge, joined as to Parts I and II, and in which ABUDU, Circuit Judge, joined as to Part III. NEWSOM, Circuit Judge, filed a concurring opinion. WILSON, Circuit Judge, filed a concurring opinion. BRANCH, Circuit Judge, filed a dissenting opinion in which LAGOA, Circuit Judge, joined. * WILSON, Circuit Judge, elected to continue in the decision of this appeal, which was reheard en banc while he was in regular active service. 28 U.S.C. § 46(c). KIDD, Circuit Judge, who joined the Court after oral argument, did not participate in the decision of this appeal. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 3 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 3 LAGOA, Circuit Judge, filed a dissenting opinion in which BRANCH, Circuit Judge, joined. BRASHER, Circuit Judge, filed a dissenting opinion in which BRANCH, LUCK, and LAGOA, Circuit Judges, joined. WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge: This appeal requires us to decide whether a state law that prohibits the purchase of firearms by minors violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments as applied to individuals between the ages of 18 and 21. After the Florida Legislature enacted this prohi- bition in response to the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the National Rifle Association and an individual member sued the Commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The district court granted summary judgment for the Commissioner. We affirm because the Florida law is consistent with our historical tradition of firearm regulation. I. BACKGROUND On February 11, 2017, Nikolas Cruz entered Sunrise Tactical Supply in Coral Springs, Florida. See MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISSION, INITIAL REPORT 262–64 (2019). Cruz turned 18 years old five months earlier and could le- gally purchase a firearm in the State of Florida. Id. at 231, 262. At Sunrise Tactical, Cruz lawfully purchased a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 semiautomatic rifle with a sling and bipod attached. Id. at 262– 64. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 4 of 169 4 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 A year later, on Valentine’s Day, Cruz arrived in an Uber at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, at 2:19 p.m. carrying the rifle. Id. at 24, 57. Two minutes later, he walked into a school building, entered a stairwell, and paused to load his rifle and don a vest that held extra magazines of ammuni- tion. Id. at 25. When a student encountered Cruz in the stairwell as he prepared for the attack, Cruz said, “you better get out of here, something bad is about to happen.” Id. Seconds later, Cruz left the stairwell and opened fire in the first-floor hallway. Id. Gina Montalto sat in the alcove of a class- room, and Luke Hoyer and Martin Duque stood outside the door. Id. Cruz fatally shot all three. Cruz then shot and wounded another student who was in the hall. Id. Next, Cruz aimed his rifle at a student-filled classroom. Id. He fired two series of shots into the room. Id. These shots killed Alyssa Alhadeff, Alaina Petty, and Alex Schachter and wounded five others. Id. at 25–26. In the next student-filled classroom that Cruz approached, he fatally shot Nicholas Dworet and Helena Ramsay and wounded four others. Id. at 26. Campus monitor Chris Hixon burst into the hallway and ran toward Cruz; Cruz turned and shot him too. Id. at 27. Hixon fell to the ground wounded and crawled behind a nearby wall. Id. Cruz turned the rifle toward yet another classroom and fired again. Id. at 28. These shots killed Carmen Schentrup and wounded three others. Id. Cruz then ran through the hallway, passed Hixon lying USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 5 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 5 wounded on the ground, and shot him again and killed him. Id. at 28, 65. Next, Cruz entered the stairwell. Id. at 28. There, he encoun- tered campus monitor Aaron Feis. Id. Cruz shot and killed him be- fore he continued to the second floor. Id. at 28–29. He entered the hallway with his rifle raised to fire but found the hallway empty. Id. at 29. As he moved through the hall, he muttered, “no one is here.” Id. Meanwhile, on the third floor, panic ensued when the fire alarm blared. Id. at 27. Students rushed for the stairwell but re- versed course when they heard the gunshots below. Id. As Cruz stalked up the stairwell, one third-floor teacher frantically tried to locate his keys so he could let students back into his classroom. Id. at 31. When Cruz entered the third-floor hallway, about 20 people were still outside classrooms. Id. He opened fire on them. Id. Scott Beigel and another teacher were holding doors open for students when Cruz shot them and killed Beigel. Id. Unable to access his classroom, the teacher searching for his keys hid with several stu- dents in the alcove of his classroom before he darted to another alcove to try a different classroom door, which was also locked. Id. at 31–32. He then directed the students to flee with him to the stair- well. Id. at 32. As they ran, Cruz opened fire on them. Id. Jaime Guttenberg and Peter Wang were fatally shot within feet of reach- ing the stairwell. Id. at 31–32. Cruz then turned his attention to Meadow Pollack, who was on the ground wounded, and Cara Loughran, who remained in the alcove, and fatally shot them. Id. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 6 of 169 6 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 at 31–33. He then entered the alcove to the men’s restroom and fatally shot Joaquin Oliver too. Id. at 31, 33. Three others were wounded during Cruz’s third-floor attack. Id. at 31. Five minutes and 32 seconds after Cruz fired the first shots, he fired the final shot. Id. at 25, 33. After shooting students and teachers on the third floor, he shot at the exterior windows of a room on that floor in a last-ditch effort to establish a sniper position to target fleeing students outside the building. Id. at 33. He then entered the stairwell, placed his rifle, vest, and 180 live rounds on the ground and ran down the stairs. Id. at 34. He left the building and ran with fleeing students to blend in. Id. at 34, 125. He walked to a nearby McDonald’s and sat down at a table occupied by a man. Id. at 35. Unbeknownst to the man, Cruz had shot and seriously injured his sister in a first-floor classroom less than an hour before. Id. at 28, 35–36. Cruz was arrested a short time later. Id. at 36–37. He killed 17 individuals and wounded 17 others during his massa- cre. Id. at 7. Less than a month later, Florida enacted the Marjory Stone- man Douglas High School Public Safety Act to “address the crisis of gun violence, including but not limited to, gun violence on school campuses.” 2018 Fla. Laws 10. The law states that a “person younger than 21 years of age may not purchase a firearm.” FLA. STAT. § 790.065(13). It also prohibits a “licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, or licensed dealer” from “ma[king] or facilitat[ing]” the “sale or transfer of a firearm to a person younger than 21 years of age.” Id. A violation of the Florida law is a third-degree felony USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 7 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 7 punishable by up to five years of imprisonment and a fine up to $5,000. Id. §§ 790.065(13), 775.082(3)(e), 775.083(1)(c). The Florida law contains exceptions permitting the purchase of a rifle or shot- gun by peace officers, correctional officers, or military personnel under the age of 21. Id. § 790.065(13). The National Rifle Association sued the Commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for declaratory and injunctive relief and alleged that the Florida law violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. Radford Fant, who was between the ages of 18 and 21 at the time, later joined as an individual plaintiff. Although the Association and Fant purported to make a facial chal- lenge to the Florida law, they alleged that it is unconstitutional only to the extent that it prohibits individuals between the ages of 18 and 21 from purchasing firearms. Colton Campbell, who is be- tween the ages of 18 and 21, has since been substituted for Fant as the individual plaintiff. The parties cross-moved for summary judgment, and the district court granted judgment for the Commissioner. The district court ruled that the Florida law does not violate the right to keep and bear arms of individuals between 18 and 21 years of age. This appeal followed. During its pendency, the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). The Supreme Court held that a firearm regulation is constitutional if it “is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradi- tion of firearm regulation.” Id. at 2126. We vacated a panel opinion that affirmed the district court after the Bruen decision to rehear USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 8 of 169 8 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 this appeal en banc. Nat’l Rifle Ass’n v. Bondi, 61 F.4th 1317 (11th Cir. 2023), vacated, reh’g en banc granted, 72 F.4th 1346 (11th Cir. 2023). And we stayed briefing until the Supreme Court later de- cided, in United States v. Rahimi, that a federal law forbidding per- sons subject to domestic-violence restraining orders from pos- sessing firearms, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8)(C)(i), was constitutional be- cause it was consistent with our historical tradition of regulating firearms. 144 S. Ct. 1889, 1898, 1903 (2024). II. STANDARD OF REVIEW We review de novo a summary judgment. Thai Meditation Ass’n of Ala. v. City of Mobile, 83 F.4th 922, 926 (11th Cir. 2023). Sum- mary judgment is proper where, construing all facts in the non- movant’s favor, there is no genuine issue of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Id. III. DISCUSSION The Second Amendment provides, “A well regulated Mili- tia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” U.S. CONST. amend. II. The Amendment secures a preexisting right held by “the people” that is “exercised individually and belongs to all Ameri- cans.” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 581 (2008). The “‘central component’ of the Second Amendment” is the right to “self- defense.” McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 767 (2010) (quot- ing Heller, 554 U.S. at 599). The Amendment guarantees Americans the right to “have weapons” and to carry them “outside of an orga- nized militia.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 582, 584 (internal quotation marks USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 9 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 9 omitted). This guarantee extends to “all instruments that consti- tute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” Id. at 582. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amend- ment is not unlimited.” Id. at 626. “From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon what- soever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Id. Since the Founding, American law has regulated arms-bearing con- duct in many ways: from prohibitions on “gun use by drunken New Year’s Eve revelers” to bans on “‘dangerous and unusual weapons’” to restrictions on concealed carry. Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1897 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 627). Although the Association and Campbell purport to make a facial challenge to the Florida law, their challenge is to the law as applied only to individuals between the ages of 18 and 21. A facial challenge requires a plaintiff to “‘establish that no set of circum- stances exists under which the [law] would be valid,’ or . . . show[] that the law lacks a ‘plainly legitimate sweep.’” Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, 144 S. Ct. 2383 (alteration rejected) (quoting United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987)). The Association and Campbell do not challenge the Florida law in that way. They argue that the law is unconstitutional because it bars individuals between the ages of 18 and 21 from purchasing firearms—not because it prohibits all minors from purchasing firearms. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 10 of 169 10 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 When a person challenges a law regulating arms-bearing conduct, courts must examine the “‘historical tradition of firearm regulation’” in our nation to “delineate the contours of the right.” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1897 (quoting Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2126). A reg- ulation is lawful if it “fits within” and “is consistent with the princi- ples that underpin” that tradition. Id. at 1897–98. This inquiry turns on “[w]hy and how” the regulation burdens the right to keep and bear arms. Id. at 1898. If it addresses the same problem as historical restrictions, it shares a “why” with those restrictions. Id. A shared “why” is a “strong indicator” that a modern regulation “fall[s] within a permissible category of regulations.” Id. And, if a regula- tion shares a “why” with historical restrictions, it is lawful if it is “‘similar’” to those restrictions in “how” it burdens the right. Id. (quoting Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2132). The burden to establish the law- fulness of a regulation lies with the government. Id. at 1897. Although a regulation “may not be compatible with the right if it” restricts the right “to an extent beyond what was done at the founding,” the regulation need “not precisely match its his- torical precursors” either. Id. at 1898. A modern law could “‘pass constitutional muster’” if it is “‘analogous enough’” to those pre- cursors to “comport with the principles underlying the Second Amendment,” even if it is not a “‘dead ringer’ or a ‘historical twin.’” Id. (quoting Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2133). To require that a modern law perfectly match a law from the Founding era erroneously “assumes that founding-era legislatures maximally exercised their power to regulate.” Id. at 1925 (Barrett, J., concurring). The Constitution USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 11 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 11 does not impose a “‘use it or lose it’ view of legislative authority.” Id. To determine whether the Florida law is consistent with our regulatory tradition, we must first decide what tradition is relevant to that inquiry. For purposes of this appeal, the Founding era is the primary period against which we compare the Florida law. The Su- preme Court has “made clear that individual rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and made applicable against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment have the same scope as against the Federal Government.” Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2137. That is, “incorpo- rated Bill of Rights protections,” like the Second Amendment, “‘are all to be enforced against the States under the Fourteenth Amend- ment according to the same standards that protect those personal rights against federal encroachment.’” McDonald, 561 U.S. at 765 (quoting Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 10 (1964)). The Supreme Court has “generally assumed that the scope” of those rights “is pegged to the public understanding of the right when the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791.” Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2137. But the Court did not definitively decide in Bruen the period of history against which we should compare firearm regulations. It acknowledged the “ongoing scholarly debate on whether courts should primarily rely on the prevailing understanding of an indi- vidual right when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868 when defining its scope (as well as the scope of the right against the Federal Government).” Id. at 2138. But it declined to decide the proper historical period because the “public understanding of the USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 12 of 169 12 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 right to keep and bear arms in both 1791 and 1868 was, for all rele- vant purposes, the same with respect to public carry.” Id. The Supreme Court relied heavily on sources from the Founding era to interpret the Second Amendment in Heller. To in- terpret the phrase “to keep and bear arms,” the Court used diction- aries from the Founding era, “written documents of the founding period,” and “state constitutional provisions written in the 18th century or the first two decades of the [nineteenth century].” Heller, 554 U.S. at 581–92. To determine the meaning of the Second Amendment’s operative clause, the Court also “look[ed]” to the “historical background of the Second Amendment” because “it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment . . . codified a pre-existing right.” Id. at 592. That historical background spanned over 100 years, from before the Glorious Revolution to the first decade of the nineteenth century. Id. at 592–95. The Court also considered the debate over whether the right to keep and bear arms “needed to be codified in the Constitution.” Id. at 598. And it again considered “analogous arms-bearing rights in state constitu- tions that preceded and immediately followed adoption of the Sec- ond Amendment.” Id. at 600–01. The Supreme Court has warned against the overuse of his- tory from Reconstruction. Although the Supreme Court looked to sources from Reconstruction in Heller, it cautioned that because those sources come “75 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, they do not provide as much insight into its original meaning as earlier sources.” Id. at 614. And, in Bruen, the Court USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 13 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 13 explained that “when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, not all history is created equal” because “‘[c]onstitutional rights are en- shrined with the scope they were understood to have when the peo- ple adopted them.’” 142 S. Ct. at 2136 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 634– 35). The Second Amendment was ratified, and its meaning fixed, in 1791. Our conclusion that we first look to the Founding under- standing finds additional support in the Supreme Court’s repeated interpretations of other amendments based on their public mean- ing at the Founding. For example, in Crawford v. Washington, the Court explained that the “founding generation’s” understanding of the “right to confront one’s accusers” derived from the “common law.” 541 U.S. 36, 43 (2004). Crawford canvassed English legal his- tory, colonial practice, state law contemporary to the ratification of the Sixth Amendment, ratification debates, and early state prac- tice to ascertain the scope of the right. Id. at 42–50. Likewise, in Virginia v. Moore, the Court explained that it “look[s] to the statutes and common law of the founding era to determine the norms that the Fourth Amendment was meant to preserve.” 553 U.S. 164, 168 (2008). And, in Nevada Commission on Ethics v. Carrigan, the Court considered legislative enactments, treatises, and conflict-of-interest rules contemporaneous to the ratification of the First Amendment to determine whether legislative recusal rules violate the First Amendment. 564 U.S. 117, 122–25 (2011). These precedents reflect the preeminence of Founding-era sources to the meaning of the Bill of Rights. Because the Supreme Court relies on sources from the USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 14 of 169 14 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 Founding era to interpret the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, we do too. Nevertheless, postratification history of a “‘regular course of practice’ can ‘liquidate [and] settle the meaning of’ disputed or in- determinate ‘terms [and] phrases’ in the Constitution.” Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2136 (quoting Chiafalo v. Washington, 140 S. Ct. 2316, 2326 (2020)). To be sure, Bruen did not “endorse freewheeling reliance on historical practice from the mid-to-late 19th century to establish the original meaning of the Bill of Rights.” Id. at 2163 (Barrett, J., concurring). And “to the extent later history contradicts what the text says, the text controls.” Id. at 2137 (majority opinion). For ex- ample, in the context of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court declined to rely on a practice of over 30 states from the “second half of the 19th century” yet relied on other evidence from that era. Es- pinoza v. Mont. Dep’t of Revenue, 140 S. Ct. 2246, 2258–59 (2020). The Court explained that it saw “no inconsistency in recognizing that such evidence may reinforce an early practice but cannot create one.” Id. at 2259 (emphasis added). So we may look to historical practice from the mid-to-late nineteenth century at least to confirm the Founding-era understanding of the Second Amendment. But we need not and do not decide in this appeal how to address a conflict between the Founding-era and Reconstruction-era understandings of the right because the law of both eras restricted the purchase of firearms by minors. Cf. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2138 (declining to ad- dress this issue because “the public understanding of the right to keep and bear arms in both 1791 and 1868 was, for all relevant pur- poses, the same with respect to public carry”). USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 15 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 15 At the Founding, a person was an “infant[]” or a “minor[]” in the eyes of the law until age 21. 1 ZEPHANIAH SWIFT, A SYSTEM OF THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT 213 (1795); accord 1 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND *463 (George Sharswood ed., 1893) (“[F]ull age in male or female is twenty-one years,” and an individual “till that time is an infant, and so styled in law.”); SAMUEL JOHNSON, I’nfant. n.s., A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1773), https://perma.cc/Q4JZ-DRGE (“Infants” were “young person[s] to the age of one and twenty.”). And the colonies “adopted age twenty-one as the near universal age of majority.” Vivian E. Ham- ilton, Adulthood in Law and Culture, 91 TUL. L. REV. 55, 64 (2016). The “age of majority at twenty-one was early established at com- mon law” and evolved “from the system of judicial combat and knight service, the age of knighthood being increased . . . to the completion of twenty years.” T. E. James, The Age of Majority, 4 AM. J. LEGAL HIST. 22, 30 (1960). English law set the age of majority at 21 years of age because of the relative lack of maturity and judg- ment of younger individuals. See 1 BLACKSTONE, supra, at *453. The English view was that a child does not “arriv[e] at years of discre- tion” until that age. Id. When a child turned 21 years of age, “the law . . . established” that “the empire of the father, or other guard- ian,” should “give[] place to the empire of reason.” Id. The Founders’ generation shared the view that minors lacked the reason and judgment necessary to be trusted with legal rights. Gouverneur Morris warned that these individuals “want prudence” and “have no will of their own.” 4 THE WRITINGS OF USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 16 of 169 16 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 JAMES MADISON 119 (Gaillard Hunt ed., 1903) (Constitutional Con- vention, August 7, 1787). Thomas Jefferson considered “infants” akin to “maniacs,” “drunkards,” and others who “cannot take care of themselves.” Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Smith (May 3, 1823), https://perma.cc/YD6X-H6PN. And, with respect to voting, John Adams explained that these individuals were not “fit to be trusted by the [p]ublic” because of their lack of “[j]udg- ment” and “[w]ill.” Letter from John Adams to James Sullivan (May 26, 1776), https://perma.cc/HW9M-7YL2. Because of their lack of reason, infants were subject to the “power” of their parents until they reached age 21. 1 BLACKSTONE, supra, at *452–53; 1 SWIFT, supra, at 213. Parents “ha[d] the benefit” and “receive[d] the profits” of their children’s labor. 1 BLACKSTONE, supra, at *453. Minors could not sue to vindicate their rights with- out joining their guardians or some other “next friend” who was not their guardian. Id. at *464. Parents controlled children’s access to information, including books. Brown v. Ent. Merchs. Ass’n, 564 U.S. 786, 831–32 (2011) (Thomas, J., dissenting). Nor could they en- list in the military without parental consent. Act of March 16, 1802, 2 Stat. 132, 135 (“[N]o person under the age of twenty-one years shall be enlisted by any officer, or held in the service of the United States, without the consent of his parent.”). Families in New Eng- land were arranged so that the “[p]atriarchal household heads sp[oke] for their dependents in dealings with the larger world.” Toby L. Ditz, Ownership and Obligation: Inheritance and Patriarchal Households in Connecticut, 1750–1820, 47 WM. & MARY Q. 235, 236 (1990). Dependent minors “lacked the formal capacity to USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 17 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 17 participate in public life and [were] subject to the authority of household heads.” Id. at 237. Among the many legal disabilities that “secure[d] [minors] from hurting themselves by their own improvident acts,” 1 BLACKSTONE, supra, at *464, minors generally lacked the capacity to contract, id. at *465, and to purchase goods on account, WILLIAM MACPHERSON, TREATISE ON THE LAW RELATING TO INFANTS 303 (1843). All “contracts with infants, except for necessaries, [were] ei- ther void or voidable” because “infants . . . are supposed to want judgment and discretion in their contracts and transactions with others.” 1 SAMUEL COMYN, A TREATISE OF THE LAW RELATIVE TO CONTRACTS AND AGREEMENTS NOT UNDER SEAL 148 (1809). As a “general rule,” contracts for the purchase of “personal property” involving minors were “voidable.” 1 SWIFT, supra, at 215. By the early nineteenth century, voidability was applied so “broadly” that “it became almost impossible for children to form any contracts.” HOLLY BREWER, BY BIRTH OR CONSENT: CHILDREN, LAW, AND THE ANGLO-AMERICAN REVOLUTION IN AUTHORITY 271 (2005) (empha- sis added). But a minor could “bind himself by his contract for ne- cessaries, for diet[,] apparel, education, and lodging.” 1 SWIFT, su- pra, at 216; accord BREWER, supra, at 271; 2 JAMES KENT, COMMENTARIES ON AMERICAN LAW 256 (William Kent ed., 8th ed. 1854). Yet, an infant who “live[d] with his father or guardian” who adequately cared for him, could not “bind himself even for neces- saries.” 2 KENT, supra, at 256–57 (emphasis added). USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 18 of 169 18 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 The inability to contract impeded minors from acquiring firearms during the Founding era. In that era, “contracts were more important for the basic transactions of society” than today. BREWER, supra, at 271. The purchase of goods, including firearms, required the ability to contract because people often bought goods on credit. See, e.g., Wills v. Brown, 3 N.J.L. 548, 548 (N.J. Sup. Ct. 1809) (dispute over a “running blacksmith account”); Christie v. Woods, 2 Yeates 213, 215 (Pa. 1797) (dispute over “goods [that] were sold on six months’ credit”); Saunders Glover & Co. v. Ott’s Adm’r, 12 S.C.L. (1 McCord) 572, 572 (1822) (dispute over goods, including “powder and pistols,” purchased on credit); MACPHERSON, supra, at 316 (discussing disputes over clothing and jewelry bought on credit). And because voidability threatened sellers with a “high risk” that they could not recover goods sold if they contracted with infants, “infants [were] effectively unable to form contracts.” BREWER, supra, at 271. Importantly, “liquor, pistols, powder, sad- dles, bridles, [and] whips” were not necessaries. Ott’s Adm’r, 12 S.C.L. (1 McCord) at 572; see also 1 SWIFT, supra, at 216 (necessaries were “diet[,] apparel, education, and lodging”); BREWER, supra, at 266 (necessaries were food, clothing, education, and medicine); 2 KENT, supra, at 256 (same). Minors also lacked disposable income to otherwise purchase firearms because they either worked for their parents for no wages, Robert J. Spitzer, Historical Weapons Re- strictions on Minors, 76 RUTGERS U.L. REV.: COMMENTARIES 101, 108 (2024), or any wages earned belonged to their parents, 1 BLACKSTONE, supra, at *453. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 19 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 19 We draw two lessons from the legal treatment of minors at the Founding. First, minors generally could not purchase firearms because they lacked the judgment and discretion to enter contracts and to receive the wages of their labor. Second, minors were sub- ject to the power of their parents and depended on their parents’ consent to exercise rights and deal with others in society. State militia laws from the Founding era confirm this under- standing. Because of the legal incapacity of individuals under the age of 21, states enacted laws at the Founding to address minors’ inability to purchase firearms required for their militia service. The Second Congress passed the Militia Act to enroll “able-bodied” men between the ages of 18 and 45 in the militia. Act of May 8, 1792, 1 Stat. 271, 271. The Act provided that “every citizen so en- rolled . . . shall . . . provide himself with a good musket or firelock.” Id. But members of Congress recognized that individuals between the ages of 18 and 21 would need their parents to provide them weapons to comply with the Act. Representative John Vining “asked by what means minors were to provide themselves with the requisite articles” for militia service. 2 JOSEPH GALES, THE DEBATES AND PROCEEDINGS IN THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES 1854– 55 (1834). And Representative Jeremiah Wadsworth responded that “as to minors, their parents or guardians would prefer furnish- ing them with arms themselves, to depending on the United States” to furnish them with arms. Id. at 1856. States addressed the problem of providing minors the fire- arms necessary for militia service in different ways. Pennsylvania USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 20 of 169 20 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 and Delaware exempted minors from the firearm requirement en- tirely. 14 JAMES T. MITCHELL & HENRY FLANDERS, THE STATUTES AT LARGE OF PENNSYLVANIA FROM 1682 TO 1801, at 456 (1909) (“[Y]oung men under the age of twenty-one . . . shall be exempted from furnishing the necessary arms, ammunition and accoutre- ments.”) (Statutes of 1793); 2 LAWS OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE 1135–36 (New Castle, Samuel Adams & John Adams 1797) (same) (Statutes of 1793). New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, North Carolina, Louisiana, Maine, and Missouri required parents of minors to acquire firearms for their militia service. THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE 421–22 (Portsmouth, John Melcher 1797) (Act of 1792); 2 THE PERPETUAL LAWS OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS 181 (Boston, I. Thomas & E. T. Andrews 1801) (Statutes of 1793); 2 THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF VERMONT 131–32 (Randolph, Sereno Wright 1808) (Act of 1797); 2 FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARTIN, THE PUBLIC ACTS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF NORTH CAROLINA 159 (Newbern, Martin & Ogden 1804) (Act of 1800); ACTS PASSED AT THE FIRST SESSION OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS 284–86 (New Orleans, James M. Bradford 1805) (Act of 1805); AN ACT TO ORGANIZE, GOVERN, AND DISCIPLINE THE MILITIA, OF THE STATE OF MAINE 21, 37 (Portland, Todd & Smith 1824) (Act of 1821); 2 LAWS OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI 533, 554, 571, 574 (St. Louis, E. Charless 1825) (Act of 1825). And Virginia, Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Mississippi, Kentucky, Geor- gia, Indiana, and Illinois implicitly required parents to supply mi- nors with firearms because those states held parents liable for USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 21 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 21 minors’ fines related to militia service, including the failure to ob- tain a firearm. 9 WILLIAM WALTER HENING, THE STATUTES AT LARGE; BEING A COLLECTION OF ALL THE LAWS OF VIRGINIA FROM THE FIRST SESSION OF THE LEGISLATURE IN THE YEAR 1619, at 270–71 (Richmond, J. & G. Cochran Printers 1821) (Act of 1777); ACTS AND LAWS OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT, IN AMERICA 307–08, 312 (Hartford, Hudson & Goodwin 1796) (Act of 1792); 3 LAWS OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 58, 63–64 (New York, Thomas Greenleaf 1797) (Act of 1793); THE PUBLIC LAWS OF THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS 436–38 (Providence, Carter & Wilkinson 1798) (Act of 1798); 2 WILLIAM KILTY, THE LAWS OF MARYLAND ch. LIII, §§ I, XV, XIX (Annapolis, Frederick Green 1800) (Supplement of 1798); WILLIAM PATERSON, LAWS OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY 438–40 (New Brunswick, Abraham Blauvelt 1800) (Act of 1799); 2 ACTS OF THE STATE OF OHIO: SECOND SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 31–32, 35 (Chillicothe, N. Willis, re- printed by The Laning Co. 1901) (Statutes of 1803); HARRY TOULMIN, THE STATUTES OF THE MISSISSIPPI TERRITORY 80 (Natchez, Samuel Terrell 1807) (Statutes of 1807); 2 LAWS OF KENTUCKY 401, 405 (Lexington, John Bradford 1807) (Statutes of 1807); OLIVER H. PRINCE, A DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF GEORGIA 330–31 (Milledgeville, Grantland & Orme 1822) (Act of 1807); AN ACT REGULATING THE MILITIA, OF THE STATE OF INDIANA 19–20 (Corydon, Carpenter & Douglass 1824) (Act of 1824); LAWS PASSED BY THE FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, AT THEIR SECOND SESSION 23 (Vandalia, Robert Blackwell 1826) (Act of 1826). USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 22 of 169 22 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 During the Founding era, minors generally lacked unre- stricted access to firearms. By 1826, at least 21 of the 24 states ad- mitted to the Union—representing roughly 89 percent of the pop- ulation, CENSUS FOR 1820, at 18 (Washington, Gales & Seaton 1821)—had enacted laws that placed the onus on parents to provide minors with firearms for militia service. These laws reflected that, at common law, minors could not purchase weapons for them- selves. Cf. Timbs v. Indiana, 139 S. Ct. 682, 688 (2019) (“In 1787, the constitutions of eight States—accounting for 70% of the U.S. pop- ulation—forbade excessive fines.” And by 1868, “the constitutions of 35 of the 37 States—accounting for over 90% of the U.S. popula- tion—expressly prohibited excessive fines.”). University regulations from the Founding era also confirm that minors needed parental consent to access firearms. At the Founding, “[c]ollege authorities stood in the place of parents to the students entrusted to their care.” Brian Jackson, The Lingering Leg- acy of In Loco Parentis: An Historical Survey and Proposal for Reform, 44 VAND. L. REV. 1135, 1135–36 (1991). Acting in loco parentis, uni- versities could impose “[a]ny rule or regulation for the betterment of” their students’ “physical, moral, and mental welfare.” Id. at 1146; accord 1 BLACKSTONE, supra, at *453 (A father could “delegate part of his parental authority, during his life, to the tutor or school- master of his child; who is then in loco parentis, and has such a por- tion of the power of the parent committed to his charge . . . as may be necessary to answer the purposes for which he is employed.”). And universities “were permitted to deny students the autonomy USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 23 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 23 and rights enjoyed by others in order to preserve institutional har- mony.” Jackson, supra, at 1147. Exercising this parental authority, universities commonly restricted firearm access both on and off campus. See generally Me- gan Walsh & Saul Cornell, Age Restrictions and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, 1791–1868, 108 MINN. L. REV. 3049, 3069–75 (2024); Spitzer, supra, at 112–19 (collecting dozens of public and private university codes and concluding that “policies restricting students’ access to weapons were common, if not ubiquitous” in the 1700s and 1800s). For example, in 1795, Yale College prohibited students from “keep[ing] any kind of fire-arms, or gun-powder.” THE LAWS OF YALE-COLLEGE, IN NEW HAVEN, IN CONNECTICUT, ENACTED BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS, THE SIXTH DAY OF OCTOBER, A.D. 1795, at 26 (New Haven, Thomas Green & Son 1800). In 1810, the University of Georgia prohibited students from possessing firearms off campus. See The Minutes of the Senatus Academicus 1799–1842, UNIV. OF GA. LIBRS. 86 (Nov. 4, 1976), https://perma.cc/EW28- VU83 (prohibiting students from possessing “any gun” or “other offensive weapon in College” or “out of the college in any case whatsoever”). Later, the University of Virginia prohibited students from keeping “weapons or arms of any kind, or gunpowder” on school grounds. University of Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, ENCYCLOPEDIA VA. 6–7 (Oct. 5, 1824), https://perma.cc/F32R- AWK9. And students at the University of North Carolina could not “keep . . . fire arms, or gunpowder” nor “carry, keep, or own at the College . . . any deadly weapon” nor “use fire arms without permis- sion from the President.” ACTS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 24 of 169 24 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 ORDINANCES OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH-CAROLINA 15 (Ra- leigh, The Raleigh Register 1838). Mid-to-late-nineteenth-century laws consistent with these principles further establish that our law historically precluded the purchase of firearms by individuals under the age of 21. In the sec- ond half of the nineteenth century, 20 jurisdictions enacted laws that restricted access to arms for minors. Most of those laws pro- hibited all methods of providing arms to individuals under the age of 21. And only a few of these laws allowed parents to provide arms to their children. Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Maryland, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Iowa, Louisiana, Wyoming, the District of Columbia, North Carolina, and Texas prohibited selling, loaning, or giving dangerous weapons, including pistols, to individuals under the age of 21. 1855–56 Ala. Laws 17; TENN. CODE § 4864 (1858), reprinted in THE CODE OF TENNESSEE ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1857–’8, at 871 (Nashville, E. G. Eastman & Co. 1858); 1860 Ky. Acts 245; 1875 Ind. Acts 59; MO. REV. STAT. § 1274 (1879), reprinted in 1 THE REVISED STATUTES OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI 1879, at 224 (Jefferson, Carter & Regan 1879); 1881 Ill. Laws 73; 1882 Md. Laws 656; 1882 W. Va. Acts 421; 1883 Wis. Sess. Laws 290 (vol. 1); 1884 Iowa Acts 86; 1890 La. Acts 39; 1890 Wyo. Terr. Sess. Laws 140; J. A. VAN ORSDEL & FENIMORE CHATTERTON, REVISED STATUTES OF WYOMING IN FORCE DECEMBER 1, 1899, at 1253 (Laramie, Chaplin, Spafford & Mathison 1899) (codifying the USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 25 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 25 territorial law); 27 Stat. 116–17 (1892); 1893 N.C. Sess. Laws 468– 69; 1897 Tex. Gen. Laws 221–22; see also Saltonstall v. Riley, 28 Ala. 164, 172 (1856) (describing a “minor under the age of twenty-one years”); Warwick v. Cooper, 37 Tenn. (5 Sneed) 659, 660–61 (1858) (referring to 21 as the age of majority); Newland v. Gentry, 57 Ky. (18 B. Mon.) 666, 671 (1857) (referring to 21 as the age of majority); MO. REV. STAT. § 2559, supra, (setting the age of majority at 21 for males and 18 for females); 64 ILL. COMP. STAT. § 1 (1881) (setting the age of majority at 21 for males and 18 for females); Hepp v. Huefner, 20 N.W. 923, 924 (Wis. 1884) (referring to 21 as the age of majority); In re Mells, 20 N.W. 486, 486 (Iowa 1884) (referring to 21 as the age of majority); State v. Kittelle, 15 S.E. 103, 103 (N.C. 1892) (referring to 21 as the age of majority); 1 JOHN SAYLES & HENRY SAYLES, SAYLES’ ANNOTATED CIVIL STATUTES OF THE STATE OF TEXAS 1009 (St. Louis, The Gilbert Book Co. 1898) (setting the age of majority at 21 for males and unmarried females). But, of those jurisdictions, only four excepted parents or guardians from their prohibitions on providing arms to individuals under the age of 21. 1860 Ky. Acts 245; MO. REV. STAT. § 1274 (1879), supra; 1897 Tex. Gen. Laws 221–22; 1881 Ill. Laws 73 (employers, too). Five other jurisdictions regulated access to arms for individ- uals under the age of 21 in slightly different ways. Mississippi pro- hibited the sale of deadly weapons including pistols to individuals under the age of 21 but did not prohibit other ways of providing arms to those individuals. 1878 Miss. Laws 175; see also Acker v. Trueland, 56 Miss. 30, 34 (1878) (referring to 21 as the age of major- ity). Similarly, Delaware prohibited the sale of “deadly weapon[s] USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 26 of 169 26 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 . . . other than an ordinary pocket knife” to minors. 16 Del. Laws 716 (1881); see also REVISED STATUTES OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO 484–85 (Wilmington, James & Webb 1874) (setting the age of majority at 21 for males and 18 for females). Georgia prohibited “sell[ing], giv[ing] lend[ing], or furnish[ing]” a pistol to a minor unless “circumstances justif[ied]” the use of the weapon to “defend[] life, limb or prop- erty.” 1876 Ga. Laws 112. Nevada and Kansas went further. Nevada prohibited individuals under the age of 21 from “wear[ing] or carry[ing] . . . dangerous or deadly weapons[],” including pistols. 1885 Nev. Stat. 51. And Kansas prohibited their “possession” of pis- tols and “other dangerous weapon[s].” 1883 Kan. Sess. Laws 159; see also Burgett v. Barrick, 25 Kan. 526, 527–29 (1881) (referring to 21 as the age of majority). The law of the Founding era, which restricted the purchase of firearms by minors, continued into the nineteenth century in the form of statutory prohibitions. By the end of the nineteenth cen- tury, at least 19 states and the District of Columbia—representing roughly 55 percent of the population of states admitted to the Un- ion, CENSUS OFF., DEP’T OF THE INTERIOR, TWELFTH CENSUS OF THE U.S. TAKEN IN THE YEAR 1900, CENSUS REPORTS, VOL. I: POPULATION 2 (1901) (1890 population data)—restricted the pur- chase or use of certain firearms by minors. When the common-law regime became less effective at restricting minors’ access to fire- arms, statutes increasingly did the work. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 27 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 27 These mid-to-late-nineteenth-century laws also carried the threat of criminal penalties. Alabama, Kentucky, Indiana, Missis- sippi, Illinois, Maryland, Kansas, and Wyoming imposed only fines for violations of their statutes. 1855–56 Ala. Laws 17; 1860 Ky. Acts 245; 1875 Ind. Acts 59; 1878 Miss. Laws 175; 1881 Ill. Laws 73; 1882 Md. Laws 656; 1883 Kan. Sess. Laws 159; 1890 Wyo. Terr. Sess. Laws 140. But Tennessee, Georgia, Missouri, Delaware, West Vir- ginia, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, Louisiana, the District of Colum- bia, North Carolina, and Texas threatened violators with imprison- ment. TENN. CODE § 4864 (1858), supra; 1876 Ga. Laws 112; THE CODE OF THE STATE OF GEORGIA 782 (R. H. Clark, et al. eds., 2d ed. 1873); MO. REV. STAT. § 1274 (1879), supra; 16 Del. Laws 716 (1881); 1882 W. Va. Acts 421; 1883 Wis. Sess. Laws 290 (vol. 1); 1884 Iowa Acts 86; 1885 Nev. Stat. 51; 1890 La. Acts 39; 27 Stat. 116–17 (1892); 1893 N.C. Sess. Laws 468–69; 1897 Tex. Gen. Laws 221–22. The age of the majority “remained unchanged” in the United States “from the country’s founding well into the twentieth century.” Hamilton, supra, at 64. When World War II necessitated lowering the conscription age to 18, states lowered the age of ma- jority too. Id. And, in 1971, the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote to individuals at the age of 18. But for much of the first two centuries of our nation, our law limited the rights of individuals under the age of 21, including their purchase of firearms. From this history emerges a straightforward conclusion: the Florida law is consistent with our regulatory tradition in why and USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 28 of 169 28 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 how it burdens the right of minors to keep and bear arms. See Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898. Because minors have yet to reach the age of reason, the Florida law prohibits them from purchasing fire- arms, yet it allows them to receive firearms from their parents or another responsible adult. The Florida law has the same “why” as the Founding-era limitations: individuals under the age of 21 have not reached the age of reason and lack the judgment and discretion to purchase fire- arms responsibly. To reduce the likelihood that another individual like Nikolas Cruz would lawfully purchase a firearm and use it to inflict grievous harm on himself or others, the Florida law restricts the purchase of firearms by individuals under the age of 21. See FLA. STAT. § 790.065(13). Likewise, our legal system “imposed age limits on all manner of activities that required judgment and reason” at the Founding. Brown, 564 U.S. at 834 (Thomas, J., dissenting). But when an individual reaches the age of reason and the need to pro- tect him and the public from his immaturity and impulsivity dissi- pates, the Florida law permits him to purchase firearms. See FLA. STAT. § 790.065(13). The Florida law is also consistent with our regulatory tradi- tion in “how” it burdens the right. Founding-era law precluded in- dividuals under the age of 21 from purchasing arms because they lacked cash and the capacity to contract. Access to arms was a mat- ter of parental consent. When Founding-era laws required minors to carry arms for militia service, states required their parents to pro- vide the arms. And universities, standing in for students’ parents, USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 29 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 29 imposed significant restrictions on both firearm access and use. Consistent with these Founding-era limitations, states in the nine- teenth century expressly prohibited the sale of arms to minors with some exceptions for parents to provide firearms to their children. The Florida law burdens the right no more than these historical restrictions because it prohibits purchase but preserves access to firearms with parental consent. Notably, the Florida law is less restrictive than the law at the Founding in some ways. The militia laws did not empower any in- dividuals under the age of 21 to purchase arms. But the Florida law contains exceptions permitting the purchase of a rifle or shotgun by peace officers, correctional officers, or military personnel. FLA. STAT. § 790.065(13). This exception is more generous than the Found- ing-era militia laws because it empowers minors to purchase fire- arms when needed for public service. The Florida law fits comfortably within postratification tra- dition too. Indeed, many postratification laws went further than the Florida law does. Fifteen jurisdictions prohibited providing pis- tols and other dangerous weapons under any circumstances to in- dividuals under the age 21, not just selling them. Only six jurisdic- tions permitted parents to provide arms to their children regardless of circumstances—a step back from the parental consent of the Founding era. And Nevada and Kansas prohibited possession by in- dividuals under the age of 21. That the Florida law is less restrictive than many of these postratification laws further confirms that it fits within our regulatory tradition. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 30 of 169 30 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 To be sure, the common-law regime of the Founding era differs from our modern regime of statutory regulation. But Su- preme Court precedents do not require a modern law to “precisely match its historical precursors.” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898. Those “precedents were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.” Id. at 1897. And we do not “assume[] that founding-era legislatures maximally exercised their power to regulate” or that the Second Amendment imposes a “‘use it or lose it’ view of legislative author- ity.” Id. at 1925 (Barrett, J., concurring). That kind of assumption is especially unwarranted here where the limitations on the legal rights of minors were so pervasive that states had no need to enact restrictions that prohibited their purchase of firearms. Instead, the inability to contract and the lack of a right to their own wages pre- cluded minors from purchasing any goods on their own, except for necessaries when their parents would not provide them. See BREWER, supra, at 271; 2 KENT, supra, at 256–57; 1 BLACKSTONE, su- pra, at *466. The question is whether the modern law is “‘analogous enough,’” and the Florida law is. Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898 (quoting Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2133). Like the Founding-era legal regime, the Florida law prevents purchases by minors. The difference between the Florida law and the Founding-era regime is that the law at the Founding was more restrictive than the Florida law because it pre- vented the purchase of many goods besides firearms. The Florida law does not violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments be- cause it restricts the rights of minors less than the Founding-era law did. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 31 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 31 Although the Founding era lacked express prohibitions on the purchase of firearms, the postratification period did not. The laws from the mid-to-late nineteenth century make explicit what was implicit at the Founding: laws may regulate the purchase of firearms by minors. To that end, 18 jurisdictions expressly prohib- ited the sale of certain arms to individuals under the age of 21 and attached criminal penalties to those prohibitions. The ways in which postratification laws are less restrictive than the Florida law do not undermine our conclusion either. Many of these laws arguably target only abnormally dangerous weapons instead of all weapons. See, e.g., TENN. CODE § 4864 (1858), supra (“pistol, bowie-knife, dirk, Arkansas tooth-pick, hunter’s knife, or like dangerous weapon, except a gun for hunting or weapon for defence in travelling”); see also Brasher Dissenting Op. at 30 (“[T]hese laws reflect a tradition of regulating specific weapons that were considered unusually dangerous because they could so easily be concealed.”). And some of these laws permitted women to purchase arms at 18 years of age instead of 21. E.g., 1881 Ill. Laws 73; 64 ILL. COMP. STAT. § 1 (1881). Even if we accept that the Florida law is more restrictive than the postratification laws in these ways, that fact does not make the Florida law inconsistent with our regulatory tradition. At the Founding, the law precluded the purchase of any kind of firearm by a minor, whether male or female. So, to the extent that the Florida law is more restrictive than postratification laws, it does not matter because the Florida law is nevertheless consistent with the law of the Founding. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 32 of 169 32 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 Judge Brasher’s dissenting opinion offers tales of Founder/President youths shooting guns, Brasher Dissenting Op. at 12–13 (recounting how Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and eldest son John Quincy Adams used firearms as children for hunt- ing and sport), to imply that it would violate the Second and Four- teenth Amendments to restrict the purchase of firearms by minors of any age, see id. at 3 (“[T]he majority has read an age limit into the Second Amendment and that amendment alone.”); id. at 12 (“[T]here are no Founding-era laws disarming anyone based on age.”); id. at 14 (“[F]ederal legislation simply required all national select militia members to arrive armed for duty; there were no spe- cific provisions about minors.”); id. at 16 (“[T]here were no Found- ing-era laws prohibiting young adults from purchasing any firearm at all.”); id. at 27 (“There were no age-based limitations on [the] right to keep and bear arms either before, during, or immediately after the adoption of the Bill of Rights.”). Judge Branch’s dissenting opinion also implies that any age restriction is unconstitutional. See Branch Dissenting Op. at 3 (“[T]he majority’s lone Founding-era analogue . . . a contract-law doctrine . . . incidentally reached con- tracts for firearms because it reached contracts by minors for any non-necessity.”). But that position defies our legal tradition, which “imposed age limits on all manner of activities that required judg- ment and reason.” Brown, 564 U.S. at 834 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Perhaps because that position is so difficult to defend, Judge Brasher’s dissent frames the Florida law as one that supposedly tar- gets “adults” between the ages of 18 and 21 even though the Florida law, by its terms, covers all individuals under the age of 21. See, e.g., USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 33 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 33 Brasher Dissenting Op. at 1 (describing the Florida law as a prohi- bition on “adult citizens between the ages of eighteen to twenty- one from purchasing any kind of firearm”). The dissent then sug- gests that its modern “adults” are individuals who possess some un- specified set of legal rights. See id. at 20 (noting that individuals over the age of 18 “can [now] be held to long term contracts” in Florida and that their parents lack an “obligation to protect them, provide for them, or ensure their safety”). And it concludes that Florida can- not bar these “adults” from purchasing firearms today regardless of their status at the Founding. Campbell and the Association take a similar approach: Although they concede that Florida may restrict the purchase of firearms by minors, they argue that Florida’s regu- latory authority is somehow tied to the age of majority that it cur- rently uses for most other rights. The dissent’s attempt to avoid the weight of legal history by labeling individuals between the ages of 18 and 21 as “adults” is un- availing. The dissent fails to define its category of “adults” for fed- eral constitutional purposes; it discounts the key fact that, at the Founding and until the late twentieth century, the age of majority was 21. Instead of reviewing the legal analogues for regulating the rights of individuals under the age of 21 as minors, the dissent treats contemporary “adults” as the so-called “analogues” of the adults of the Founding era. Id. at 31 (“Not to belabor the point, but eighteen- to twenty-one-year-olds in Florida today are analogous to adults, not minors, at the time these statutes were enacted.”). The dissent fails to explain which, or how many, modern rights push an indi- vidual across the threshold from minor to adult under the Second USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 34 of 169 34 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 Amendment. Taken to its logical end, the dissent’s position would mean that the federal right to keep and bear arms turns on a sliding scale defined by contemporary state law that varies from jurisdic- tion to jurisdiction. The federal right could even mean something entirely different in Florida next week depending on the public pol- icy choices of its legislature. That Florida has lowered the age of majority for some rights does not mean that it has less power to restrict the rights of minors than it did at the Founding. Although 21 was the near-universal age of majority at the Founding, Hamilton, supra, at 64, Florida, in re- cent decades, has lowered the age of majority for many rights to 18, see FLA. STAT. § 743.07. But not all states have lowered the age of majority like Florida. See, e.g., MISS. CODE § 1-3-27 (establishing 21 years as the age of majority except with respect to the capacity to enter contracts that affect personal or real property); ALA. CODE § 26-1-1(a) (establishing 19 years as the age of majority). And even modern Florida laws bar individuals under the age of 21 from pur- chasing alcohol and tobacco. See FLA. STAT. § 562.11(1)(a) (alcohol); id. § 569.101(1) (tobacco). Judge Brasher’s dissent would have us hold that the Second Amendment turns on an evolving standard of adulthood that is divorced from the text of the Amendment and from our regulatory tradition. We decline to do so. See THOMAS M. COOLEY, A TREATISE ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS WHICH REST UPON THE LEGISLATIVE POWER OF THE STATES OF THE AMERICAN UNION 54 (Boston, Little, Brown, & Co. 1868) (“A prin- cipal share of the benefit expected from written constitutions USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 35 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 35 would be lost if the rules they established were so flexible as to bend to circumstances or be modified by public opinion.”). In a real sense, Judge Brasher’s dissent erroneously reviews the Florida law under an equal-protection standard masquerading as an analysis under the Second Amendment. It asserts that the Florida law cannot stand because the principle that minors were subject to the power of their parents at the Founding does not ad- equately support application of the law to individuals between the ages of 18 and 21 today. Brasher Dissenting Op. at 21 (asserting that “Florida cannot enforce its ban based on a historical justification that does not exist in the present day”). In effect, the dissent applies heightened scrutiny and asks whether the Florida law is sufficiently tailored to the dissent’s chosen justification. But settled law makes clear that we ordinarily review age classifications under the Equal Protection Clause for rational basis, and the Florida law easily sat- isfies that standard. See Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 470 (1991) (Because “age is not a suspect classification under the Equal Pro- tection Clause,” a state “need therefore assert only a rational basis for its age classification.”). Although the dissent contends that age classifications that involve fundamental rights receive strict scru- tiny, Brasher Dissenting Op. at 22, the Supreme Court has “recog- nized that even where there is an invasion of protected freedoms ‘the power of the state to control the conduct of children reaches beyond the scope of its authority over adults,’” Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 638 (1968) (quoting Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 170 (1944)). Indeed, the Supreme Court has described the right to vote as “fundamental,” Harper v. Va. State Bd. of Elections, USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 36 of 169 36 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 383 U.S. 663, 670 (1966), yet it has held that Congress could not use its enforcement power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amend- ment to require states to lower the voting age from 21 to 18, Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112, 130 (1970). After all, Section 2 of the Four- teenth Amendment itself uses 21 years as an age classification for that right. U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 2 (reducing the “basis of rep- resentation” of any state that “denie[s]” the “right to vote” to “any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age”). Florida did not lose its constitutional authority to regulate minors’ access to firearms when it in recent decades bestowed on individuals between the ages of 18 and 21 greater rights than they would have enjoyed at the Founding. Indeed, that Florida distin- guishes between the purchase of a firearm and other rights is con- sistent with the Founding-era legal regime, which also distin- guished between when individuals under the age of 21 could exer- cise rights based on need and maturity. For example, individuals under the age of 21 could enter valid contracts to purchase neces- saries if their parents did not provide those necessaries. 2 KENT, su- pra, at 256–57. The law also treated marriage contracts differently than other contracts. See 1 BLACKSTONE, supra, at *433, 436. Boys could validly marry at the age of 14, and girls could at the age of 12—the “years of discretion” for marriage. Id. at *436. These Founding-era exceptions for the exercise of rights based on need or judgments about maturity are no different from Florida’s contem- porary judgment that only individuals with a greater degree of ma- turity should be able to purchase firearms. And that judgment is USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 37 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 37 one reserved for legislatures whose role it is to formulate policy about legal adulthood—not courts. To this point, our dissenting colleagues offer no response. Nor does the fact that some states required minors to serve in the militia establish that they had a right to unfettered firearm access. Judge Brasher’s dissent mistakes the duty of some minors to serve in the militia for a right to purchase firearms. See Brasher Dissenting Op. at 13–16. Although minors between the ages of 18 and 21 could serve in the militia, there was no national requirement that they do so. Instead, Congress permitted, but did not require, states to mandate militia service for minors between 18 and 21 years of age. 1 Stat. at 271–72. And, consistent with that authority, New Jersey, Ohio, and Kansas exempted minors from service in the militia in the nineteenth century. ACTS OF THE FIFTY-FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY 3 (Trenton, Jo- seph Justice 1829) (excluding minors under the age of 21 from the militia); ACTS OF A GENERAL NATURE, PASSED BY THE FORTY SECOND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF OHIO 53 (Columbus, Samuel Medary 1844) (same); KAN. CONST. of 1859, art. VIII, § 1 (same). Contrary to the dissent, the militia laws establish no national “ex- pectation of gun ownership” by minors. Brasher Dissenting Op. at 14. They establish only that many state legislatures determined that minors could be required to bear arms provided by their parents and to use those arms under the command and supervision of mi- litia officers. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 38 of 169 38 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 We also reject, as contrary to Supreme Court precedent, Judge Branch’s dissenting opinion that we must rely only on fire- arm-specific regulations from the Founding era and cannot con- sider the common law of contracts that governed minors. See Branch Dissenting Op. at 3. Reliance on the common-law regime of contracts is appropriate because the Florida law prohibits the sale of firearms—a kind of contract. And it adheres to Supreme Court precedent because, in Rahimi, the Supreme Court relied on princi- ples “[w]ell entrenched in the common law” that were not limited to firearms. 144 S. Ct. at 1900. Specifically, the Supreme Court re- lied on surety laws, which generally required that an individual pledge to keep the peace and “could be invoked to prevent all forms of violence.” Id. As the Rahimi Court explained, “the Second Amendment permits more than just those regulations identical to ones that could be found in 1791.” Id. at 1897–98. Nor does it make any sense for Judge Branch’s dissenting opinion to suggest that our citation of a decision refusing to enforce a creditor’s purported contract with a minor, Ott’s Adm’r, 12 S.C.L. (1 McCord) at 572, somehow proves that minors regularly pur- chased firearms in the Founding era, see Branch Dissenting Op. at 7. Judge Branch’s dissent cites no firearm-sales contract with a mi- nor enforced by any court, and it points to no evidence that minors in any state regularly purchased firearms. It bears repeating that it is unclear whether our dissenting colleagues accept that any age restriction for the sale of firearms is constitutional. If they do not, their position would require USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 39 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 39 enjoining the enforcement of numerous federal and state laws, in- cluding a federal law that prohibits licensed sellers from selling “any firearm or ammunition” to an individual under the age of 18. See 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1). But if our dissenting colleagues accept that some age restrictions are constitutional—and they do not say that they do—it is unclear what aspects of the Founding-era legal regime they believe would support that position. Would the com- mon-law regime of contracts be relevantly similar for limiting sales of firearms to any minors? Or would a firearm-specific regulation from that era be necessary? Would the common-law regime that enshrined parental control be relevantly similar? Or would the leg- islatures of that era have had to exercise that control? And if the aspects of the common-law regime that we have invoked are rele- vantly similar for upholding modern laws that prohibit sales of fire- arms to minors under the age of 18 years, what principle of consti- tutional law do our dissenting colleagues believe empowers the federal judiciary to override the judgment of the Florida legislature to draw the line at 21 years, the same line that prevailed during the Founding era and throughout most of American history? Keep in mind that Congress too has drawn the same line of 21 years for sales of firearms that are not “a shotgun or rifle.” Id. On these ques- tions, our dissenting colleagues exercise a right to remain silent. See Branch Dissenting Op. at 1 n.1 (“I express no opinion on any re- strictions placed upon Americans under 18 years of age.”). The recent contrary decision of our sister circuit—which ig- nored how the common-law regime restricted minors’ access to firearms—also fails to persuade us. Reese v. Bureau of Alcohol, USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 40 of 169 40 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, 127 F.4th 583, 586 (5th Cir. 2025) (holding unconstitutional a federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1), (c)(1), that prohibits licensees from selling handguns to minors between the ages of 18 and 21). Our sister circuit considered state militia laws and university regulations without reference to the common law at the Founding. See id. at 596–99. But even mid-nineteenth century jurists described “the unwritten law” as the “basis of our jurisprudence.” Commonwealth v. Chapman, 54 Mass. (13 Met.) 68, 69 (1847). The common law “furnishe[d] the rules by which public and private rights [we]re established and secured, the social rela- tions of all persons regulated, their rights, duties, and obligations determined, and all violations of duty redressed and punished.” Id. From those jurists’ perspective, without the common law, “the written law, embracing the constitution and statute laws, would constitute but a lame, partial, and impracticable system.” Id.; see also ANTONIN SCALIA & BRYAN A. GARNER, READING LAW: THE INTERPRETATION OF LEGAL TEXTS 3 (2012) (“Ours is a common-law tradition . . . . Statutes were a comparatively infrequent source of English law through the mid-19th century.”). Indeed, in the Found- ing era, “crimes were often defined by the common law rather than by statute.” STUART BANNER, THE DECLINE OF NATURAL LAW 50 (2021). And after the American Revolution, the states quickly “passed ‘reception statutes’ to adopt English common law as judi- cial precedent.” BRYAN A. GARNER, ET AL., THE LAW OF JUDICIAL PRECEDENT 738 (2016); see generally Ford W. Hall, The Common Law: An Account of Its Reception in the United States, 4 VAND. L. REV. 791, 798–800 (1951); see also ANTHONY J. BELLIA JR. & BRADFORD R. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 41 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 41 CLARK, THE LAW OF NATIONS AND THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION 10 (2017) (“Each state adopted the common law of England and, by extension, key parts of the law of nations.”). The written laws of the Founding era must be understood in the light of that predominant common-law regime. See William Baude & Robert Leider, The General-Law Right to Bear Arms, 99 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1467, 1468–70 (2024) (“The constitutionaliza- tion of a preexisting right means that . . . the Constitution’s refer- ence to a legal right must be understood by learning the historical customary law that defined and governed the right before its codi- fication.”); J. Joel Alicea, Bruen Was Right, 174 U. PA. L. REV. (forth- coming 2025) (manuscript at 32–33), https://perma.cc/C592 -T8GA (“[T]he more reasonable reading is that Bruen does not, in fact, limit the category of historical evidence to regulations. Bruen is an originalist methodology . . . . In other contexts, the Court has rightly looked to many different sources to determine the original meaning of the Constitution.”); see generally Stewart Jay, Origins of Federal Common Law: Part Two, 133 U. PA. L. REV. 1231 (1985); An- thony J. Bellia Jr. & Bradford R. Clark, General Law in Federal Court, 54 WM. & MARY L. REV. 655 (2013); Caleb Nelson, The Persistence of General Law, 106 COLUM. L. REV. 503 (2006); William Baude, et al., General Law and the Fourteenth Amendment, 76 STAN. L. REV. 1185 (2024). That common-law regime restricted minors’ ability to pur- chase firearms. The state statutes that obligated parents to provide firearms for minors’ militia service confirm that minors had limited access, and the many university regulations that restricted firearm possession by students confirm that minors’ access was a matter of USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 42 of 169 42 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 parental consent. Because the Fifth Circuit failed to consider the background common-law regime, it misapprehended the import of these written laws. See Reese, 127 F.4th at 597 (The “requirements that parents furnish firearms for their sons’ militia service do not mean that the military-age young men lacked the right to keep and bear (or obtain) such arms themselves.”); id. at 596 (“Actions taken in loco parentis say little about the general scope of Constitutional rights and protections.”). Nor are we persuaded that two other considerations present in Rahimi command a different conclusion. First, although the Su- preme Court acknowledged in Rahimi that section 922(g)(8)(C)(i) did not apply to an entire class of “persons thought by a legislature to present a special danger of misuse,” it did so because the Found- ing-era comparators, surety and going-armed laws, did not apply to entire classes either. 144 S. Ct. at 1901–02. Section 922(g)(8)(C)(i) “presumes, like the surety laws before it, that the Second Amend- ment right may only be burdened once a defendant has been found to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others.” Id. at 1902. Unlike the surety and going-armed laws, the rule that minors had not “arriv[ed] at years of discretion” and lacked legal capacity ap- plied during the Founding era to all individuals under the age of 21. 1 BLACKSTONE, supra, at *452–53. So, it does not matter that the Florida law applies to a class of individuals because the Founding- era comparators did too. Second, the lack of criminal penalties at the Founding is not dispositive, especially in the light of the criminal penalties that USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 43 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 43 emerged during the nineteenth century. Rahimi considered the penalty that attaches to a firearm regulation as a “relevant,” but not necessary, “aspect of the burden.” 144 S. Ct. at 1902. Violations of the Florida law carry the possibility of imprisonment of up to five years and a fine of up to $5,000. FLA. STAT. §§ 790.065(13), 775.082(3)(e), 775.083(1)(c). The law at the Founding did not im- pose criminal penalties on individuals under the age of 21 who pur- chased firearms. But postratification laws, which prohibited the purchase of firearms by individuals under the age of 21 consistent with Founding-era limitations, did threaten violators with fines and imprisonment. E.g., TENN. CODE § 4864 (1858), supra. And the law at the Founding was not toothless either. Voidability threatened sellers with a “high risk” that they could not recover goods sold if they contracted with infants. BREWER, supra, at 271. As a criminal penalty might discourage an individual in Florida from purchasing a firearm, voidability so discouraged sellers such that “infants [were] effectively unable to form contracts.” Id. Although there was no risk of imprisonment until the nineteenth century, other incentives nevertheless discouraged the sale of firearms to individ- uals under the age of 21. The burden on the right is not so different as to compel the conclusion that this “relevant aspect” deserves dis- positive weight. Finally, we assume, but do not decide, that individuals under the age of 21 are part of “the people” protected by the Second Amendment. Some have argued that we need not look beyond the text of the Second Amendment to determine whether laws like the Florida law are constitutional because these individuals are not part USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 44 of 169 44 Opinion of the Court 21-12314 of “the people” protected by the Amendment. See, e.g., Lara v. Comm’r Pa. State Police, 125 F.4th 428, 447 (3d Cir. 2025) (Restrepo, J., dissenting) (“The public in 1791 did not understand those under 21 to be part of ‘the people’ protected by the Second Amend- ment.”); see also Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2129–30 (“When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Con- stitution presumptively protects that conduct.”); cf. Brown, 564 U.S. at 821 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (“The practices and beliefs of the founding generation establish that ‘the freedom of speech,’ as orig- inally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the mi- nors’ parents or guardians.”). But others have pointed to the Su- preme Court’s statement that “the people” includes “all members of the political community,” Heller, 554 U.S. at 580, to argue that these individuals are part of “the people” protected by the Amend- ment and that “the people” protected by the Second Amendment are the same as “the people” protected by the First and Fourth Amendments, see, e.g., Lara, 125 F.4th at 435–38 (majority opinion); see also United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 265 (1990) (The text of the Constitution “suggests that ‘the people’ protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amend- ments, . . . refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community.”). Those amendments protect individuals under the age of 21. See Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969) (free speech); New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 341 (1985) (unreasonable searches and seizures). Because the parties as- sume that minors are among “the people” protected by the Second USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 45 of 169 21-12314 Opinion of the Court 45 Amendment and the Florida law is consistent with our regulatory tradition in any event, we assume that the Second Amendment protects individuals under the age of 21. The Florida law that prohibits minors from purchasing fire- arms does not violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments be- cause it is consistent with our historical tradition of firearm regula- tion. From the Founding to the late-nineteenth century, our law limited the purchase of firearms by minors in different ways. The Florida law also limits the purchase of firearms by minors. And it does so for the same reason: to stop immature and impulsive indi- viduals, like Nikolas Cruz, from harming themselves and others with deadly weapons. Those similarities are sufficient to confirm the constitutionality of the Florida law. IV. CONCLUSION The judgment in favor of the Commissioner is AFFIRMED. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 46 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 1 ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge, joined by JORDAN, Circuit Judge, as to Parts I and II, and by ABUDU, Circuit Judge, as to Part III, Concur- ring: I join in the Majority Opinion’s excellent explanation of why the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, see Fla. Stat. § 790.065(13), “is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 17 (2022). I write separately to add three thoughts. First, in concluding Florida’s law is constitutional under the Second Amendment, I agree with the Majority Opinion that here, we need not rely heavily on the Reconstruction Era laws that barred the sale of some firearms to those under 21 (“Under-21s”). That’s so because the Founding Era perceived the problem that Under-21s “lacked the reason and judgment necessary to be trusted with legal rights.” Maj. Op. at 15. So its common law imposed “relevantly similar,” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29, restrictions on Under- 21s’ right to keep and bear arms to the Florida law’s. But I write separately to show that we could rely heavily on the Reconstruc- tion Era laws because they represent the states’ response to a new and different problem—an unprecedented kind of Under-21 fire- arm violence—that began to arise during the nineteenth century. And they are also “relevantly similar” to Florida’s law. Second, modern medical science bolsters the Majority Opin- ion’s conclusion that Florida’s law limits Under-21s’ ability to buy firearms for the same reasons the common law did during the USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 47 of 169 2 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 Founding Era. As I’ve noted, the Majority Opinion explains that the common law presumed that Under-21s “lacked the reason and judgment necessary to be trusted with legal rights.” Maj. Op. at 15. Modern medicine confirms our Founders’ hunch. As it turns out, the common-law principle is based on the manifestation of what we now know to be scientific fact. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for exercising judgment and moderating behavior in social situations, is one of the last regions of the brain to mature—and it doesn’t hit that point until around the age of 25. So Florida adhered to “this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” when it enacted a law designed to moderate the risk Under-21s’ limited reasoning and decisionmaking ability may pose to themselves and the public at large. Third, I agree with the Majority Opinion’s decision to leave for another day whether Founding Era or Reconstruction Era evi- dence controls Bruen’s historical inquiry, Maj. Op. at 14, if a conflict arises between the two or the Founding Era is silent on the issue. I write separately to emphasize that good reasons favor that deci- sion. For starters, it’s not necessary to resolve the question because no conflict exists here between Founding Era and Reconstruction Era history. Second, many constitutional scholars and courts have weighed in on the side of Reconstruction Era history in a conflict or Founding Era silence. And for good reason. Among others, the Constitution’s meaning is fixed to the understanding of those who ratified it, so we interpret the Constitution’s provisions, including those guaranteeing our rights, at the time the people adopted them. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 634–35 (2008). USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 48 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 3 And when we speak of the incorporation of the Second Amend- ment right against the states, that occurred in 1868 when Ameri- cans adopted the Fourteenth Amendment. See Bruen, 597 U.S. at 37–38. Finally, modern Second Amendment jurisprudence is still in its infancy. So allowing more time for courts and scholars to weigh in on the question will help us reach the best understanding. I discuss each of my three points in more detail below. I. The states’ response to a new problem—an unprece- dented kind of Under-21 firearm violence—that be- gan to arise during the nineteenth century because of unprecedented societal and technological change is “relevantly similar” to Florida’s law. The Majority Opinion explains why both Founding Era and nineteenth-century laws are relevantly similar to Florida’s law and why they show that Florida’s law is constitutional. In this Part, I write to add a few thoughts on the nineteenth-century history. Before diving into that history, though, I pause to review some principles that govern our historical inquiry. The Supreme Court has recognized that times change, and with them, so do tech- nology and societal problems. See Bruen, 597 U.S. at 27; United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680, 691–92 (2024). As a result, “[t]he reg- ulatory challenges posed by firearms today are not always the same as those that preoccupied the Founders in 1791 or the Reconstruc- tion generation in 1868.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 27. Yet the Second Amendment was “intended to endure for ages to come, and conse- quently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.” USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 49 of 169 4 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 415 (1819) (emphasis omitted). In reconciling the Second Amendment with modern soci- ety’s problems and technology, the Court has explained that the Second Amendment is not “a law trapped in amber.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 691. Indeed, “the Second Amendment permits more than just those regulations identical to ones that could be found in 1791.” Id. at 691–92. So our inquiry asks whether the modern law is “rel- evantly similar to laws that our tradition is understood to permit, applying faithfully the balance struck by the founding generation to modern circumstances.” Id. at 692 (cleaned up). That question requires us to consider “[w]hy and how the regulation burdens the right” to keep and bear arms. Id. “For example, if laws at the founding regulated firearm use to address particular problems, that will be a strong indicator that contemporary laws imposing similar restrictions for similar reasons fall within a permissible category of regulations.” Id. But sometimes new problems arise, and legislatures must address “unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technologi- cal changes.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 27; see Bianchi v. Brown, 111 F.4th 438, 464 (4th Cir. 2024) (en banc) (“These are not our forebears’ arms, and these are not our forebears’ calamities. We thus take the instruction of Bruen to engage in a ‘more nuanced approach’ to ad- dress these ‘unprecedented societal concerns.’” (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 27)). USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 50 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 5 When that happens, a challenged law often will not simply be “an updated model of a historical counterpart.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 739 (Barrett, J., concurring). But it may well still be constitu- tional. The question is whether “the challenged regulation is con- sistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,” id. at 692 (Roberts, C.J., majority) (emphasis added), not whether the challenged regulation has a historical “twin” or “cousin,” id. at 739 (Barrett, J., concurring). And to answer that question, we must view the principles underlying our regulatory tradition through the correct lens, adjusting the focus to “just the right level of general- ity” so that we are continuing to respect the Second Amendment, see id. at 740, while not “trap[ping] [the law] in amber,” id. at 691 (Roberts, C.J., majority). Put differently, we must ask ourselves whether we are “endorsing outliers that our ancestors would never have accepted.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30 (quoting Drummond v. Robin- son, 9 F.4th 217, 226 (3d Cir. 2021)). Bruen suggests that analogical reasoning—comparing the “why” and the “how” of historic laws to the challenged law—is one way to resolve the questions our historical inquiry poses. Still, the Court explained that it didn’t conduct an “exhaustive survey of the features that render regulations” consistent with our Nation’s tra- dition of firearm regulation. Id. at 29. Other factors also help us assess whether a historic law can serve as a “relevantly similar” an- alogue for a law that addresses “circumstances beyond those the USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 51 of 169 6 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 Founders specifically anticipated.” Id. at 28–29. I mention two be- low. First, if the “proliferation of ” analogues to a challenged law “coincides with the” new changes or technological developments, that may suggest that the modern law can pass constitutional mus- ter. Antonyuk v. James, 120 F.4th 941, 1022 (2d Cir. 2024). Today’s laws, though they may in some ways regulate arms-bearing behav- ior “to an extent beyond what was done at the founding,” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692, or through “different means,” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 26, need only impose a “comparable burden” that is “comparably jus- tified” by new societal problems and technological advancements, id. at 29. See, e.g., Bianchi, 111 F.4th at 464 (“[L]egislatures, since the time of our founding, have responded to the most urgent and visi- ble threats posed by excessively harmful arms with responsive and proportional legislation.”). After all, “founding-era legislatures” generally did not “max- imally exercise[] their power to regulate,” and the Constitution does not “adopt[] a ‘use it or lose it’ view of legislative authority.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 739–40 (Barrett, J., concurring). So when gov- ernments enact a new solution to solve a new problem, that law may still “fit[] neatly within” our regulatory tradition despite differ- ences from its historical predecessors. Id. at 698 (Roberts, C.J., ma- jority); see, e.g., United States v. Diaz, 116 F.4th 458, 471 & n.5 (5th Cir. 2024) (relying on one historical analogue to supply the “why” and on another to separately supply the “how”). USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 52 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 7 Second, if a proposed historical analogue has been “reason- ably consistent and longstanding,” that favors the conclusion that the modern law accords with a tradition of firearm regulation. Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 724 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring); see Heller, 554 U.S. at 626 (confirming “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions”); Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30 (ex- plaining laws are more likely constitutional where there are “no dis- putes regarding the lawfulness of such prohibitions”). We generally don’t “repeat[]” unconstitutional acts and al- low them “to crystallize into a regular practice.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 724 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (quoting United States v. Midwest Oil Co., 236 U.S. 459, 472–73 (1915)); accord McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1, 27 (1892); The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U.S. 655, 688–90 (1929); Republican Party of Minn. v. White, 536 U.S. 765, 785 (2002); NLRB v. Noel Canning, 573 U.S. 513, 525–26 (2014); cf. Washington v. Glucks- berg, 521 U.S. 702, 710, 723–24 (1997) (finding no fundamental right where longstanding laws regulate that purported right); Kerry v. Din, 576 U.S. 86, 95 (2015) (plurality opinion) (same); Dobbs v. Jack- son Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. 215, 239–41 (2022) (same); Dep’t of State v. Munoz, 602 U.S. 899, 911–12 (2024) (same). So regular or longstanding practices can imply constitutionality. And we view that implication of constitutionality as even stronger if a particular practice has gone unchallenged (or survived challenges) in jurisdictions that enforce “analogous arms-bearing rights” through “interpretation[s] of . . . state constitutional provi- sions adopted by . . . state courts.” See Heller, 554 U.S. at 585 & USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 53 of 169 8 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 nn.8–9, 600–05, 610–14 (identifying jurisdictions that secure the same preexisting right as does the Second Amendment). Presum- ably, lawyers over the past two centuries would have sought to vin- dicate their clients’ constitutional rights. That they didn’t (or failed in doing so) is highly probative of the conclusion that a similar, modern regulation does not violate those rights. Cf. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 27 (“[I]f . . . proposals were rejected on constitutional grounds, that rejection surely would provide some probative evidence of un- constitutionality.”). To be clear, I’m not suggesting that “freewheeling reliance on historical practice,” “unmoored from [the] original meaning” of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, may establish modern regulations’ constitutionality. Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 738 (Barrett, J., concurring) (cleaned up). “[T]he use of postenactment history,” of course, “requires some justification other than originalism sim- pliciter.” 1 Id. 1 Still, I do not imply that post-ratification history—or “tradition”—has the limited use (or even the “irrelevan[ce]”) that Judge Newsom suggests it does. Newsom Conc. Op. at 1 (citation and emphasis omitted). Given the length of this opinion and the varied subjects it addresses already, I will leave for another day a fuller explanation of why I disagree. But for now, it suffices to note two points. First, our Framers intended post-ratification history, even some his- tory from long after the Founding, to play an important role in constitutional interpretation. Liquidating constitutional indeterminacies is a prime example. See THE FEDERALIST NO. 37 (James Madison) (“All new laws . . . are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.”); see gener- ally William Baude, Constitutional Liquidation, 71 STAN. L. REV. 1 (2019) USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 54 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 9 But consistent and longstanding practices may “reinforce our understanding of the Constitution’s original meaning,” includ- ing “the scope of the pre-existing right that the people enshrined in our fundamental law.” Id. at 738–39 (citation omitted). And they may do so “even when that practice began after the founding era.” Noel Canning, 573 U.S. at 525. For instance, if Founding Era practice plausibly supports two interpretations of the Second Amendment’s scope—one that suggests a modern law’s constitutionality and one that does not— a well-established, post-Founding practice may confirm which of the two controls. See, e.g., Hanson v. District of Columbia, 120 F.4th 223, 238 (D.C. Cir. 2024) (relying on post-Reconstruction and early- twentieth century practice to define the “relevant historical tradi- tion” as “the regulation of weapons that are particularly capable of unprecedented lethality and not, as the dissent would have [had] it, upon the regulation of Bowie knives specifically”); cf. Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 1022 (concluding public parks are sensitive places because the late-nineteenth century “municipal tradition of regulating (describing the historical basis for constitutional liquidation and explaining “[p]rivileging early practice through liquidation is tempting but wrong”); see also Stephen E. Sachs, Originalism as A Theory of Legal Change, 38 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL’Y 817, 855–57 (2015) (explaining constitutional liquidation is not in- consistent with originalism—and may be affirmatively originalist—because it may reflect an “actual Founding-era legal rule”). And second, as I’ve ex- plained, we have long considered (in fact, one might say it’s a tradition to con- sider) “tradition” in constitutional analysis. See Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 726–29 & n.5 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (collecting cases spanning more than two cen- turies). USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 55 of 169 10 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 firearms in urban public parks” was “apparently accepted without any constitutional objection by anyone”). Here, the nineteenth-century history calls for us to employ both these tools. First, in that century, a problem that didn’t and couldn’t have existed during the Founding Era arose for the first time: an unprec- edented kind of lethal, gun-related violence that Under-21s largely inflicted. The new violence became possible because of revolution- ary advances in firearms technology. And the urbanization and in- dustrialization of the United States in the Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods enabled Under-21s to buy these newly disruptive firearms for the first time. This perfect storm caused the common-law concern that Under-21s lack the necessary reason and judgment to buy arms to manifest in a way far more dangerous than our “Founders specifically anticipated.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 28. To put a finer point on it, this new problem was a more fo- cused manifestation of Under-21s’ less-than-fully-developed rea- soning ability that served as the basis for the common-law re- strictions during the Founding Era. And it demanded more focused solutions—laws that specifically addressed the problem of Under- 21 gun violence. In other words, a narrower “why” required a more targeted “how.” So states across the country responded to this hurricane of violence by enacting statutory restrictions on Under-21s’ purchases of certain arms to restore the Founding Era status quo. And USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 56 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 11 (second,) those statutory restrictions stood the test of time for more than 150 years. This Part explains why we can rely on those nineteenth-cen- tury laws in our analysis, and it shows that they are “relevantly sim- ilar” to Florida’s law. Section A traces the societal and technologi- cal roots of the emerging nineteenth-century problem of lethal gun violence perpetrated by Under-21s. Section B recounts the states’ response to this new problem and explains that the states’ laws have withstood the test of time for more than 150 years. And Sec- tion C shows that Florida’s law is “relevantly similar” to these nine- teenth-century precursors, so it, too, survives Second Amendment scrutiny. A. Dramatic technological and sociological changes created a new problem of lethal firearm violence perpetrated by Under-21s in the nineteenth century. At the Founding, firearms seldom contributed to homicides. To the contrary, “interpersonal violence among colonists and early Americans rarely resulted in death.” Bianchi, 111 F.4th at 464 (citing Randolph Roth, Why Guns Are and Aren’t the Problem, in A RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS? THE CONTESTED ROLE OF HISTORY IN CONTEMPORARY DEBATES ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT 116 ( Jennifer Tucker et al. eds., 2019)). Firearms were simply impractical for the task. Americans owned muskets and fowling pieces, which were prone to misfiring, needed to be reloaded after each shot, and required substantial ac- umen and experience to effectively employ in combat. Roth, Why USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 57 of 169 12 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 Guns Are and Aren’t the Problem, supra, at 116–17; Joseph Blocher & Eric Ruben, Originalism-by-Analogy and Second Amendment Adjudica- tion, 133 YALE L.J. 99, 153 (2023); see also Bianchi, 111 F.4th at 464. Founding Americans also couldn’t store their firearms pre-loaded because the gunpowder of the time absorbed moisture, which cor- roded the gun’s metal and firing mechanisms. Roth, Why Guns Are and Aren’t the Problem, supra, at 117; see Blocher & Rubin, supra, at 153 (“Guns thus generally were not kept or carried loaded in 1791 . . . .”); see also Bianchi, 111 F.4th at 464. So Americans didn’t carry guns that they could readily use in a fight. Bianchi, 111 F.4th at 464; see Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 14 (1985) (“[C]ommon-law rule[s] developed at a time when weapons were rudimentary. Deadly force could be inflicted almost solely in a hand-to-hand struggle . . . .”). In fact, “[w]ell into the 1800s, even after pistols became more common, some still consid- ered knives to be more dangerous.” Blocher & Ruben, supra, at 154; see Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394, 402 (1859) (“The gun or pistol may miss its aim, and when discharged, its dangerous character is lost, or diminished at least. . . . The bowie-knife differs from these in its device and design; it is the instrument of almost certain death.”). Not only were guns impractical as impromptu combat weapons during the Founding Era, but Under-21s couldn’t buy fire- arms, anyway. As the Majority Opinion explains, “the limitations on” Under-21s’ “legal rights . . . were so pervasive” that they created a practical bar on Under-21s’ ability to buy guns. Maj. Op. at 29. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 58 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 13 Under-21s had no cash because most worked for their parents, and for those who didn’t, any wages they might have earned belonged to their parents. See 1 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND *453 (William Carey Jones ed., 1915). And Under-21s also couldn’t buy firearms because they couldn’t con- tract or use credit to purchase goods. See Maj. Op. at 16–18. In- deed, sellers viewed Under-21s as too high-risk to sell to. See id. Plus, even if Under-21s could somehow get their hands on firearms, their parents could simply dispossess their children of them. After all, at the Founding, parents enjoyed “total parental control over children’s lives.” Brown v. Ent. Merchs. Ass’n, 564 U.S. 786, 830 (2011) (Thomas, J., dissenting). Parents could even excuse their children from both militia and military service. See 25 ANNALS OF CONG. 172 (1812) (Joseph Gales ed., 1834) (remarks of Rep. Jo- siah Quincy III) (“The obligation to serve in the militia, is always subject to the paramount duty to the master and the parent.”); Frances M. Clarke & Rebecca Jo Plant, No Minor Matter: Underage Soldiers, Parents, and the Nationalization of Habeas Corpus in Civil War America, 35 L. & HIST. REV. 881, 892–95 (2017) (explaining parents’ widespread use of the writ of habeas corpus to recall their children from military service was “rooted in common law traditions that imbued parents with substantial authority over their children until they reached the age of majority”). USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 59 of 169 14 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 In short, the common-law “practically prohibit[ed],” 2 Reese v. BAFTE, 127 F.4th 583, 597 (5th Cir. 2025), Under-21s from 2 The Dissents, and our colleagues from the Fifth Circuit, first err here. As the Dissents put it, “there is no evidence that legal barriers . . . were the primary impediment to eighteen-year-olds arming themselves.” Brasher Diss. Op. at 23; see also Branch Diss. Op. at 3 n.2, 7 (suggesting “minors did buy goods on credit, including firearms”). Our colleagues in the Fifth Circuit also suggest they aren’t aware of Founding Era laws that “curtail[ed]” or “practically pro- hibit[ed]” Under-21s from purchasing firearms. See Reese, 127 F.4th at 597. But unlike here, the parties before our sister circuit did not present the court with evidence of the common law’s “practical prohibit[ions],” see id., on Under-21s’ purchases of firearms. So the Fifth Circuit was apparently unaware of the ev- idence on that point. The Dissents, in contrast, reach their erroneous conclu- sion by ignoring the collection of common-law restrictions that worked to- gether to, as a practical matter, prevent Under-21s from purchasing or bearing arms without the permission of their parents or some other guardian in loco parentis, like a militia officer or college administrator. Instead, they pluck one legal rule—the voidability of Under-21s’ contractual obligations—from the network of the common-law regime, considering it essentially in isolation. Compare Brasher Diss. Op. at 16–21 (discussing only contracting capacity), and Branch Diss. Op. at 3–6 (suggesting the majority relies on “contract-law doc- trine” and “inferred economic effects” resulting from “contract-law doctrine”), with Maj. Op. at 15–18 (discussing common-law parental rights and contrac- tual rules that, in practical effect, meant Under-21s “generally could not pur- chase firearms”). But the Majority Opinion and this concurrence are chock full of evidence that Under-21s could not purchase firearms at the Founding and that the Founding generation accounted for that fact in its legislation. See, e.g., Maj. Op. at 18–22 (recounting legislative debates about laws requiring par- ents to procure weapons for militia-aged children because the common-law regime prevented Under-21s from purchasing firearms themselves); infra Part I.A (explaining states enacted statutory restrictions on Under-21s’ access to firearms to fill gaps in the eroding common-law regulatory regime). So on the Dissents’ and the Fifth Circuit’s own standard, the Founding Era history sup- ports Florida’s law. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 60 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 15 purchasing firearms, so Under-21s didn’t pose a public-safety risk at the Founding. But in the nineteenth century, societal develop- ments and technological advancements upset that status quo: Gun technology and manufacturing improved drastically, the United States urbanized and industrialized, and we underwent the Civil War. Because of these circumstances, Under-21s gained the per- sonal and economic freedom to buy the new, widely available, and lethal weapons. To start with technology, by the 1810s, multiple inventors had begun developing “percussion caps”—small, sealed caps (usu- ally made of copper) filled with fulminate, a detonating chemical. Brian DeLay, The Myth of Continuity in American Gun Culture, 113 CALIF. L. REV. (forthcoming 2025) (manuscript at 66). So firearm owners no longer had to fill a gun’s pan with priming powder be- cause gunsmiths could create an ignition system that would strike the precision cap and light the fulminate within, igniting the gun- powder that would discharge the bullet. Id. at 66–67; see also Bian- chi, 111 F.4th at 465. As a result, more effective pistols appeared in commerce. DeLay, supra, at 67. By the 1830s, repeating pistols entered the mar- ket, spearheaded by Samuel Colt’s and Ethan Allen’s designs. Id. at 68; see also Bianchi, 111 F.4th at 465. And by 1866, gunsmiths devel- oped the modern centerfire metallic cartridge. David B. Kopel & Joseph G.S. Greenlee, The History of Bans on Types of Arms Before 1900, 50 J. Legis. 223, 267 (2024). These bullets were more stable and reliable than their predecessors. And they benefitted from USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 61 of 169 16 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 more improvements in 1884, when a new type of gunpowder ena- bled firearms to shoot “further and with a flatter trajectory than ever before.” Id. At the same time, the United States rapidly industrialized and urbanized. In the period immediately after the Revolution, the United States was an agrarian society; “urban areas simply did not exist in 1791 as we understand them today.” Blocher & Ruben, su- pra, at 154. The whole country consisted of only four million Ameri- cans, and New York, our largest city at that time, had just 33,000 people. Id. Americans were mostly “isolated farmers” who “pro- duced just enough food, livestock, and clothing for their own fam- ily’s needs.” GEORGE B. TINDALL & DAVID E. SHI, AMERICA: A NARRATIVE HISTORY 353 (10th ed. 2016). Families typically lived to- gether on a farm, with children providing their parents much- needed labor throughout their youth. Steven Ruggles, Multigener- ational Families in Nineteenth-Century America, 18 CONTINUITY & CHANGE 139, 160–62 (2003). The War of 1812 spurred the beginning of dramatic changes. It forced the United States to become more self-reliant and to enlarge its manufacturing capabilities. TINDALL & SHI, supra, at 341. So the country began to shift from an “agricultural repub- lic” to a “commercial” and “industrial” nation. Id. at 341–42. New jobs in mills, factories, stores, and banks attracted Americans to cit- ies, and they left their farms. Id. at 352. In the 1830s and 1840s, northern states rapidly urbanized. Jeffrey G. Williamson, USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 62 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 17 Antebellum Urbanization in the American Northeast, 25 J. ECON. HIST. 592, 598–99, 602 (1965). In fact, “by 1860 most of the cities in the Northeast and many in the Midwest fully qualified as industrial-ur- ban complexes,” id. at 604—a substantial shift in American de- mographics from the Founding and Antebellum periods. To put the overall change in perspective, only about five per- cent of the United States’s population lived in cities in 1790. David R. Goldfield, The Stages of American Urbanization, 5 OAH MAG. HIST. 25, 27 (1990). But for each of the decades between 1820 and 1870, our nation’s urban population grew at three times the rate of our national population. Id. So by 1870, more than a quarter of the American population lived in cities. Id. As a result, by halfway through the 1800s, a “market-based economy” had replaced the farm economy, and Americans had access to cash income, which they could use to buy goods. TINDALL & SHI, supra, at 352–53 (em- phasis omitted). Firearms were among those goods. PATRICK J. CHARLES, ARMED IN AMERICA: A HISTORY OF GUN RIGHTS FROM COLONIAL MILITIAS TO CONCEALED CARRY 141 (2019). Shops started stockpil- ing and selling arms. Id. at 404 n.211. And “Americans scrambled to buy them.” Roth, WHY GUNS ARE AND AREN’T THE PROBLEM, supra, at 121. Against a background of industrialization, huge population increases, and a race to urbanize, “the rapid proliferation of mass- produced single-shot and repeating pistols unsurprisingly led to in- creases in armed crime.” DeLay, supra, at 68. And by the 1850s, USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 63 of 169 18 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 “gun violence” became “a significant societal problem for the first time in American history.” Megan Walsh & Saul Cornell, Age Re- strictions and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, 1791–1868, 108 MINN. L. REV. 3049, 3088 (2024); see Bianchi, 111 F.4th at 465 (first citing RANDOLPH ROTH, AMERICAN HOMICIDE SUPPLEMENTAL VOLUME: WEAPONS FIGURES Figures 25, 29, 34, 38 (2009); and then citing Roth, Why Guns Are and Aren’t the Problem, supra, at 122). Homicide statistics show when this problem arose. At the Founding and into the nineteenth century, homicide rates fell as Americans understood “the long-term consequences of the Revo- lution.” RANDOLPH ROTH, AMERICAN HOMICIDE 180 (2009). By the 1820s, homicide rates in the North hit historic lows—the lowest rates in our history. Id. So too in the mountain South. Id. at 180– 81. And in the Midwest, the homicide rates bottomed out by the 1830s. Id. at 180. But as the nineteenth century progressed through the Ante- bellum period and into Reconstruction, interpersonal violence surged. The wave started in the South, before sprawling north- ward, eastward, and westward. Bianchi, 111 F.4th at 465 (citing ROTH, AMERICAN HOMICIDE, supra, at 180, 199–201, 299–302, 337). And for the first time, Under-21s began to regularly perpe- trate gun violence, too. Industrialization and “the loss of fathers and older brothers” in the Civil War resulted in less family “con- trol” over Under-21s. Loren Walker, Juvenile Violence, 1861-1865 (Civil War Era), in ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JUVENILE VIOLENCE 148, 148 (Laura L. Finley ed., 2007). And because, during the industrial USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 64 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 19 revolution, children were more economically valuable to their fam- ilies by laboring in mills and factories, Under-21s’ families often re- moved them from farm life and took them to cities to work. Wil- liam S. Bailey, Flawed Justice: Limitation of Parental Remedies for the Loss of Consortium of Adult Children, 27 SEATTLE U. L. REV. 941, 946 (2004). In turn, “[o]ver the course of the early nineteenth century,” courts “gradually abandoned th[e] set of legal rules” that “pre- vented minors from making contracts” or “work[ing] for wages.” James D. Schmidt, “Restless Movements Characteristic of Childhood”: The Legal Construction of Child Labor in Nineteenth-Century Massachu- setts, 23 L. & HIST. REV. 315, 317–18 (2005) (identifying three peri- ods of legal developments in Massachusetts: 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s–1910s). Industrialization, mass production of guns, and the erosion of the common-law regime that effectively banned Under- 21s from buying firearms meant that Under-21s could now pur- chase cheap, widely available guns. Urbanization also exposed many Under-21s to crime and poverty. New York City, for instance, “saw an enormous increase in the number of juvenile gangsters.” HERBERT ASBURY, THE GANGS OF NEW YORK: AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF THE UNDERWORLD 238 (Capricorn Books 1970) (1928). Overall, juvenile crime ex- ploded, and the number of juvenile reformatories increased from one in 1825 to forty-five by 1885. Walker, supra, at 148. Americans noticed this problem in real time. Citizens com- plained “that it was ‘common’ practice among the more violently USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 65 of 169 20 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 inclined to ‘arm themselves with Pistols, dirks knives sticks & spears under the specious pretence of protecting themselves,’ which resulted in the ‘stabbing shooting & murdering so many of our citizens.’” Bianchi, 111 F.4th at 466 (quoting ROTH, AMERICAN HOMICIDE, supra, at 218–19). And they thought Under-21s were among the “more violently inclined” who should not possess these new, lethal firearms. Editorials and news reports decrying Under-21s’ access to firearms littered publications in the post-Civil War United States. See Nat’l Rifle Ass’n v. Bondi, 61 F.4th 1317, 1319 & nn.1–5, 1329–30 (11th Cir.) (collecting newspapers and editorials), reh’g en banc granted, opinion vacated, 72 F.4th 1346 (11th Cir. 2023); cf. Heller, 554 U.S. at 615 (relying on “an editorial” to conclude that a “view” was “widely held”). “[B]oth lawmakers and the public supported” “laws restricting the sale of dangerous weapons to minors.” CHARLES, supra, at 156; see id. at 404–05 (collecting legislative history, news- papers, and other primary materials). They thought these re- strictions would slow and prevent Under-21s from inflicting fire- arm-related casualties. Id. at 156. Because of this perfect storm of dramatic societal and tech- nological changes, between the middle and end of the nineteenth century, Americans faced a public-safety crisis “beyond [anything] the Founders specifically anticipated.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 28. And they responded with statutes restricting the sale of firearms to Un- der-21s in jurisdictions where more than half the United States pop- ulation lived. Maj. Op. at 26. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 66 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21 B. Statutory prohibitions on the sale of firearms to Under-21s have survived all constitutional challenges from Reconstruction to this decade. Those criminal, statutory prohibitions on the sale of fire- arms to Under-21s survived, to my knowledge, any constitutional scrutiny for the first 166 years after Alabama enacted the first such state-wide statute in 1855. See Maj. Op. at 23–27 (collecting stat- utes); Hirschfeld v. BAFTE, 5 F.4th 407, 438 & n.51, 453 (4th Cir.) (first-ever appellate opinion declaring unconstitutional a restriction on the sale of certain firearms to Under-21s), vacated as moot, 14 F.4th 322 (4th Cir. 2021). That “longstanding” practice is highly “probative” of the Second Amendment’s meaning and its scope. Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 724 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). Take the first three states to enact bans on Under-21s’ pur- chase of certain firearms: Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. 1855–56 Ala. Laws 17; Tenn. Code § 4864 (1858), reprinted in THE CODE OF TENNESSEE ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1857– ’8 871 (Nashville, E. G. Eastman & Co. 1858); 1860 Ky. Acts 245; see also Saltonstall v. Riley, 28 Ala. 164, 172 (1856) (describing a “minor under the age of twenty-one years”); Warwick v. Cooper, 37 Tenn. (5 Sneed) 659, 660–61 (1858) (referring to 21 as the age of majority); Newland v. Gentry, 57 Ky. (18 B. Mon.) 666, 671 (1857) (same). These three states made it illegal to “sell,” “give,” or “loan” certain fire- arms—including handguns, the “quintessential self-defense weapon,” Heller, 554 U.S. at 629—to Under-21s even before the Civil War and Reconstruction. They did so because the violence that USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 67 of 169 22 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 advancements in firearm lethality wrought hit the South first in the Antebellum period. See ROTH, AMERICAN HOMICIDE, supra, at 180, 199–202, 219. All three statutes either went unchallenged or survived con- stitutional scrutiny. And that’s so even though each state court in- terpreted its state constitution’s right to keep and bear arms in lock- step with what the Supreme Court has said is the original meaning of the Second Amendment. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 602–03, 608–09, 612–13 (approving of the rights enshrined in the constitutions of Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky). Alabama’s Constitution, for example, “adopted” a “Second Amendment analogue” that “used the . . . individualistic phrasing that each citizen has the ‘right to bear arms in defence of himself and the State.’” Heller, 554 U.S. at 602 (quoting ALA. CONST. of 1819, art. I, § 23). Its supreme court then clarified that any “statute which, under the pretence of regulating, amounts to a destruction of the right, or which requires arms to be so borne as to render them wholly useless for the purpose of defence, would be clearly unconstitutional.” State v. Reid, 1 Ala. 612, 616–17 (1840). Still, against that backdrop, Alabama made it illegal to “sell or give or lend, to any male minor, a[n] . . . air gun or pistol.” 1855 Ala. Laws 17; see Saltonstall, 28 Ala. at 172 (describing “a minor un- der the age of twenty-one years”). And no one successfully chal- lenged the law. In fact, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld a con- viction under it. Coleman v. State, 32 Ala. 581, 582–83 (1858). USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 68 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 23 The same thing happened in Tennessee. The Tennessee Su- preme Court interpreted the State’s Second Amendment analogue to secure a right “to be exercised and enjoyed by the citizen as such, and not by him as a soldier, or in defense solely of his political rights.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 608 (quoting Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. 165, 183–84 (1871)); see id. at 613–14 (“[T]he Tennessee Supreme Court had treated the state constitutional provision as conferring a right ‘to all the free citizens of the State to keep and bear arms for their defence.’” (quoting Simpson v. State, 13 Tenn. 356, 360 (1833))). As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it, “every man has a right to own and keep” weapons such as “pocket pistols, or revolvers” for defense. Page v. State, 50 Tenn. 198, 198 (1871). Yet despite Page’s recognition of “every man[’s] . . . right to own and keep” “pocket pistols, or revolvers,” id., the state prohib- ited selling, loaning, giving, or delivering “to any minor a pistol . . . or like dangerous weapon, except a gun for hunting or weapon for defence in traveling,” Tenn. Code § 4864 (1858), supra; see Warwick, 37 Tenn. (5 Sneed) at 660–61 (1858) (referring to 21 as the age of majority). And when a challenge to that law made it to the Ten- nessee Supreme Court, the tribunal rejected the challenge, even cit- ing Page v. State in the process. State v. Callicutt, 69 Tenn. 714, 716– 17 (1878). The court concluded “the acts to prevent the sale, gift, or loan of a pistol or other like dangerous weapon to a minor” are “not only constitutional as tending to prevent crime but wise and salutary in all its provisions.” Id. USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 69 of 169 24 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 21-12314 As for Kentucky, its state constitution also “referred to the right of the people to ‘bear arms in defence of themselves and the State.’” Heller, 554 U.S. at 584–85 & n.8, 602 (citing KY. CONST. of 1792, art. XII, § 23). The Kentucky Supreme Court interpreted the provision generously, suggesting almost any regulation of the right to keep and bear arms would violate the State’s constitution: “[W]hatever restrains the full and complete exercise of that right, though not an entire destruction of it, is forbidden by the explicit language of the constitution. . . . [A]ll which diminish or impair it as it existed when the constitution was formed, are void.” Bliss v. Commonwealth, 12 Ky. 90, 91–92, 93 (1822) (declaring unconstitu- tional a concealed-carry restriction). That expansive interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms was an outlier in that it over-secured the right as the Second Amendment embodied it. Other states recognized that fact. See Commonwealth v. Murphy, 166 Mass. 171, 172–73 (1896) (explaining Bliss “has not been generally approved”). Yet it appears that no one challenged Kentucky’s law making it unlawful for anyone, “other than the guardian,” to “sell, give, or loan any pistol . . . slung-shot, cold, cane-gun, or other deadly weapon . . . to any minor.” 1859 Ky. Acts 245, § 32; see Newland, 57 Ky. (18 B. Mon.) at 671 (1857) (referring to twenty-one as the age of majority). And in one in- stance, Kentucky’s highest appellate court dismissed for want of jurisdiction an appeal from a prison sentence based on a conviction under the statute. Tankersly v. Commonwealth, 9 S.W. 702, 702–03 (Ky. 1888). USCA11 Case: 21-12314 Document: 131-1 Date Filed: 03/14/2025 Page: 70 of 169 21-12314 ROSENBAUM, J., Concurring 25 Even after Americans ratifi [Text truncated at 120,000 characters. The full text is on the page linked above.] --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/10823293. Public record. Not legal advice.