Amicus Curiae Brief — National Rifle Association, Incorporated, Petitioner v. Mark Glass, Commissioner, Florida Department of Law Enforcement

No. 24-1185

In the

Supreme Court of the United States

________________

NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC.,

Petitioner,

v.

MARK GLASS, Commissioner,

Florida Department of Law Enforcement,

Respondent.

________________

On Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the

United States Court of Appeals for the

Eleventh Circuit

________________

BRIEF FOR AMICUS CURIAE NATIONAL

SHOOTING SPORTS FOUNDATION, INC.,

IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER

________________

PAUL D. CLEMENT

LAWRENCE G. KEANE

SHELBY BAIRD SMITH ERIN E. MURPHY

NATIONAL

Counsel of Record

SHOOTING SPORTS MATTHEW D. ROWEN

FOUNDATION, INC. EVAN M. MEISLER*

400 N. Capital St., NW CLEMENT & MURPHY, PLLC

Washington, DC 20001 706 Duke Street

(202) 220-1340

Alexandria, VA 22314

(202) 742-8900

erin.murphy@clementmurphy.com

* Supervised by principals of the firm

who are members of the Virginia bar

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

June 20, 2025

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ....................................... ii

STATEMENT OF INTEREST ................................... 1

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT .................................... 2

ARGUMENT ............................................................... 4

I.

The Decision Below Implicates Multiple

Divisions Of Authority ........................................ 4

A. 18-to-20-Year-Olds Are Among “the

People” the Second Amendment Protects.... 4

B. Laws That Prohibit Law-Abiding Adults

From Acquiring Firearms Plainly

Implicate the Second Amendment ............... 7

II. The Eleventh Circuit’s Historical Analysis Is

Deeply Flawed ................................................... 15

III. The Question Presented Is Exceptionally

Important, And This Case Is A Good Vehicle .. 19

CONCLUSION ......................................................... 22

ii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases

Andrews v. State,

50 Tenn. 165 (1871) ............................................... 10

Beckwith v. Frey,

766 F.Supp.3d 123 (D. Me. 2025) .......................... 12

Chavez v. Bonta,

2025 WL 918541 (S.D. Cal. Mar. 26, 2025) ............ 7

District of Columbia v. Heller,

554 U.S. 570 (2008) ...................... 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 20

Ezell v. City of Chicago,

651 F.3d 684 (7th Cir. 2011).................................... 9

Gamble v. United States,

587 U.S. 678 (2019) ................................................ 15

Harrel v. Raoul,

144 S.Ct. 2491 (2024) ............................................. 20

Hirschfeld v. ATF,

5 F.4th 407 (4th Cir. 2021) .................................... 15

Lara v. Comm’r, Pa. State Police,

125 F.4th 428 (3d Cir. 2025).......................... 6, 7, 18

N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen,

597 U.S. 1 (2022) ................................ 2, 7, 13, 14, 15

NRA, Inc. v. ATF,

700 F.3d 185 (5th Cir. 2012).................................... 2

NRA, Inc. v. ATF,

714 F.3d 334 (5th Cir. 2013)........................ 2, 19, 21

Pinales v. Lopez,

765 F.Supp.3d 1024 (D. Haw. 2025) ....................... 7

Reese v. ATF,

127 F.4th 583 (5th Cir. 2025) .......................... 2, 7, 9

iii

Rocky Mountain Gun Owners v. Polis,

121 F.4th 96 (10th Cir. 2024) ........................ 7, 8, 10

Silvester v. Becerra,

138 S.Ct. 945 (2018)............................................... 14

Teixeira v. Cnty. of Alameda,

873 F.3d 670 (9th Cir. 2017).............................. 9, 10

United States v. Knipp,

138 F.4th 429 (6th Cir. 2025) .................................. 9

United States v. Perez-Garcia,

96 F.4th 1166 (9th Cir. 2024) ............................ 9, 13

United States v. Rahimi,

602 U.S. 680 (2024) ........................................ 2, 5, 13

Worth v. Jacobson,

108 F.4th 677 (8th Cir. 2024) .......................... 4, 5, 6

Yukutake v. Lopez,

130 F.4th 1077 (9th Cir. 2025) ................................ 9

Constitutional Provision

U.S. Const. amend. XXVI ........................................... 6

Statutes

10 U.S.C. §505 ............................................................ 6

18 U.S.C. §922(d) ...................................................... 11

18 U.S.C. §923(a) ...................................................... 11

50 U.S.C. §3802(a) ...................................................... 6

1875 Ind. Act 59 ........................................................ 19

1890 La. Acts 39 ....................................................... 19

1890 Wyo. Terr. Sess. Laws 140 .............................. 19

Colo. Rev. Stat. §18-12-112(2)(f) ................................ 8

Colo. Rev. Stat. §18-12-112.5(1)(a.5).......................... 8

iv

Militia Act of 1792, 1 Stat. 271 ................................ 15

Other Authorities

Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024) ............. 11, 12

Everytown for Gun Safety, Has the State

Raised the Minimum Age for Purchasing

Firearms? (updated Jan. 15, 2025),

https://tinyurl.com/2s4w6c2u .................................. 1

David B. Kopel & Joseph Greenlee, The

Second Amendment Rights of Young

Adults, 43 S. Ill. Univ. L.J. 495 (2019) ................. 15

Kim Parker et al., Pew Rsch. Ctr. America’s

Complex Relationship With Guns (June 22,

2017), https://tinyurl.com/5abkf25w ..................... 20

Outdoor Foundation, 2022 Special Report on

Hunting & the Shooting Sports,

https://tinyurl.com/4792v65t (last visited

June 20, 2025) ........................................................ 21

STATEMENT OF INTEREST1

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, Inc.

(“NSSF”), is the firearm industry’s trade association.

Since its founding over six decades ago, NSSF’s

mission has been to promote, protect, and preserve

America’s hunting and shooting-sports traditions. Its

interest in this case is clear. NSSF today has

approximately 10,000 members, including federally

licensed manufacturers, distributors, and sellers of

firearms, ammunition, and related products. NSSF

members engage in the lawful production, import,

distribution, and sale of constitutionally protected

arms. When a state like Florida bans a class of lawabiding

adults—here,

18-to-20-year-olds—from

purchasing such arms, that action threatens NSSF

members’ businesses, infringes on their and their

customers’ fundamental constitutional rights, and

undermines NSSF’s mission of inculcating America’s

proud hunting and shooting-sports traditions.

Unfortunately, Florida is not alone in trying to nip

those traditions in the bud. Twenty-one states (plus

D.C.) restrict the sale of some or all firearms to 18-to20-year-olds. Everytown for Gun Safety, Has the State

Raised the Minimum Age for Purchasing Firearms?

(updated Jan. 15, 2025), https://tinyurl.com/2s4w6c2u.

NSSF has participated in challenges to many of these

age-based restrictions. For instance, NSSF filed an

1 Pursuant to Rule 37.6, amicus states that no counsel for any

party authored any part of this brief and that no one, aside from

amicus, its members, and its counsel, made any monetary

contribution toward the brief’s preparation or submission.

Counsel of record were provided notice of amicus’ intent to file

this brief fewer than ten days before its filing, but consented.

2

amicus brief in NRA, Inc. v. ATF, 700 F.3d 185 (5th

Cir. 2012), a challenge to the federal prohibition on

selling handguns to persons under the age of 21. The

Fifth Circuit rejected the challenge back then, 714

F.3d 334 (5th Cir. 2013), but it recently revisited the

issue with the benefit of this Court’s decisions in New

York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597

U.S. 1 (2022), and United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S.

680 (2024), and held the law unconstitutional, Reese v.

ATF, 127 F.4th 583 (5th Cir. 2025). In the decision

below, by contrast, the en banc Eleventh Circuit

upheld Florida’s age-based ban on the theory that it is

“consistent with our historical tradition of firearm

regulation.” App.45. Because the decision below is not

only wrong but deeply important, NSSF files this

amicus brief in support of certiorari.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

The decision below deepened an acknowledged

circuit split over whether young adults who are

entrusted with using firearms in service of defending

their country may nonetheless be prohibited from

keeping and bearing arms for self-defense. That is

reason enough for this Court to grant review, as the

petition ably explains. But this case also presents an

opportunity to resolve two related and recurring

threshold issues of surpassing importance: Do laws

that restrict the sale or purchase of arms regulate

conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s plain

text? And, if they do, are such laws nevertheless

“presumptively lawful”? Bruen and Rahimi seem to

make crystal clear that the answers are “yes” and “no,”

respectively. But many courts on the Eleventh

Circuit’s side of the split have reached the opposite

3

conclusions, holding that laws prohibiting a class of

adults from purchasing firearms do not even implicate

the Second Amendment, meaning that such laws need

not be measured by historical tradition (or anything)

at all. Those questions are antecedent to the question

presented, and they could not be more important. This

case presents an excellent opportunity to resolve them

once and for all.

While the decision below at least got the answer

to those threshold questions right, the Eleventh

Circuit erred both methodologically and factually in

concluding that Florida’s age-based ban is consistent

with historical tradition. The court conceded that

there was no Founding-era practice of banning young

adults from purchasing firearms. Yet it upheld

Florida’s law by analogizing it to Founding-era laws

and social conditions that would have made it difficult

as a practical matter for 18-to-20-year-olds to acquire

firearms from sources other than their parents or the

state. Those supposed analogues, however, are not

remotely similar to Florida’s law in either “how” or

“why” they burdened arms-bearing conduct. The

Eleventh Circuit’s reliance on Reconstruction-era laws

is similarly misplaced, for two reasons:

First,

Reconstruction-era laws are less illuminating of our

regulatory tradition than Founding-era law, which

favored—indeed, required—arms ownership by 18-to20-year-olds. Second, even on their own terms, the

Reconstruction-era laws on which the Eleventh

Circuit relied demonstrate, at most, a practice of

barring minors from purchasing firearms. Today, 18to-20-year-olds are not minors. There is, simply put,

no well-established historical analogue for modern

laws barring young adults from purchasing firearms.

4

The decision below, and the other decisions on its

side of the split, defy this Court’s teachings. If this

Court chooses to stay on the sidelines, generations of

young adults who are expected to be prepared to use

arms in defense of their Nation will be prevented and

deterred from lawfully acquiring firearms at home,

threatening to cut off at the root our historic traditions

of participation in hunting and shooting sports. Those

proud traditions bring families and communities

together and provide great economic benefits. Like all

traditions, participation at a young age is key. If this

Court declines to grant certiorari, other states will

take notice, age-based firearm restrictions will

proliferate, and this venerable tradition will wither

away.

ARGUMENT

I.

The Decision Below Implicates Multiple

Divisions Of Authority.

A. 18-to-20-Year-Olds Are Among “the

People”

the

Second

Amendment

Protects.

In the decision below, the Eleventh Circuit

“assume[d], but d[id] not decide, that individuals

under the age of 21 are part of ‘the people’ protected

by the Second Amendment.” App.43-44. By doing so,

the court skipped over a critical aspect of the Second

Amendment’s threshold inquiry, thereby suggesting

that this is a difficult question. As courts that have

addressed it head-on have recognized, it is not: 18-to20-year-olds are plainly part of “the people.”

In Worth v. Jacobson, 108 F.4th 677 (8th Cir.

2024), for instance, Minnesota argued that young

adults are not part of “the people” because, at the

5

Founding, “individuals did not have rights until they

turned 21 years old.” Id. at 689. As the Eleventh

Circuit noted below, that factual premise is certainly

true; persons under age 21 were considered minors,

and thus were generally not permitted to keep the

wages they earned, access printed materials or enlist

in the military without parental consent, enter into

contracts, purchase items on credit, or vote. App.1417. But that does not mean that 18-to-20-year-olds are

shut out of the Second Amendment’s protections, any

more than it means that they can be deprived of other

constitutional rights today.

Heller defined “the

people” as “all members of the political community,

not an unspecified subset.” District of Columbia v.

Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 580 (2008). To say that 1791

conditions fix the outer bounds of the “political

community” is like suggesting that the Second

Amendment reaches only the types of firearms then in

existence. But see id. at 582 (“the Second Amendment

extends … to all instruments that constitute bearable

arms, even those that were not in existence at the time

of the founding”).

Indeed, treating “the people” as a concept

“trapped in amber,” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 691, would be

an even more egregious mistake, as it would mean

that anyone who was excluded from the body politic at

the Founding—whether owing to age, race, religion,

sex, or some other reason that has long been

discarded—could continue to be so today consistent

with the Second Amendment. The whole point of

rendering people who were once excluded part of the

political community is to ensure that they share all the

same rights as any other member of the community—

including the right to keep and bear arms.

6

For precisely those reasons, the Eighth Circuit

rejected Minnesota’s argument, reasoning that “the

people,” like the term “arms,” “has a fixed definition,

though not fixed contents.” Worth, 108 F.4th at 689.

Since the Founding, the constituents of America’s

“political community” has undoubtedly expanded to

include non-whites, women, and—as relevant here—

18-to-20-year-olds. This expansion is evident in both

state and federal law. In virtually all states, the age

of majority is now eighteen, enabling 18-to-20-yearolds to form contracts and keep their wages. As a

matter of federal law, an 18-year-old may now vote,

U.S. Const. amend. XXVI, and enlist in the military

without parental consent, see 10 U.S.C. §505. Indeed,

18-to-20-year-old males are required to register for

selective service and be prepared to carry arms in

defense of their country. 50 U.S.C. §3802(a). The

Eighth Circuit thus (correctly) determined that

“[r]eading the Second Amendment in the context of the

Twenty-Sixth Amendment unambiguously places 18

to 20-year-olds within the national political

community.” Worth, 108 F.4th at 691. In short,

“[e]ven if the 18 to 20-year-olds were not members of

the ‘political community’ at common law, they are

today.” Id.

The Eighth Circuit is in good company on that

score. As the Third Circuit recognized in Lara v.

Commissioner, Pennsylvania State Police, 125 F.4th

428 (3d Cir. 2025), if “we were rigidly limited by

eighteenth-century conceptual boundaries,” then “‘the

people’ would consist solely of white, landed men, and

that is obviously not the state of the law.” Id. at 437.

Given

that

18-to-20-year-olds

enjoy

other

constitutional rights, including the freedom of speech

7

and against unreasonable searches and seizures,

“wholesale exclusion of 18-to-20-year-olds from the

scope of the Second Amendment,” the Third Circuit

held, would render the Second Amendment “a secondclass right, subject to an entirely different body of

rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” Id. at

437-38 (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 70). And as noted

at the outset, the Fifth Circuit agreed in Reese. 127

F.4th at 589-95.

Even some courts that have wrongly upheld agebased restrictions on the sale and purchase of firearms

have had little trouble concluding that “ordinary, lawabiding citizen[s] under the age of 21 … [are] part of

‘the people’ as defined by the Second Amendment.”

Rocky Mountain Gun Owners v. Polis (“RMGO”), 121

F.4th 96, 116 (10th Cir. 2024); see also Chavez v.

Bonta, 2025 WL 918541, at *4-6 (S.D. Cal. Mar. 26,

2025). Indeed, all circuits to address the question

head-on “have concluded that 18- to 20-year-olds are

included within ‘the people.’” Pinales v. Lopez, 765

F.Supp.3d 1024, 1040 (D. Haw. 2025). That makes the

Eleventh Circuit’s reticence all the more perplexing.

To prevent further wasteful litigation about this

elementary concept, the Court should grant certiorari

and confirm that 18-to-20-year-olds are part of “the

people” and therefore entitled to the same protections

as any other law-abiding adult.

B. Laws That Prohibit Law-Abiding Adults

From Acquiring Firearms Plainly

Implicate the Second Amendment.

In addition to the “people” issue, this case

implicates another, even-more-maddening issue that

is critically important and antecedent to the question

8

presented: Whether laws that restrict the sale or

purchase of arms restrict conduct covered by the plain

text of the Second Amendment. While the decision

below thankfully did not side with lower courts that

have held that laws banning the sale or purchase of

arms do not even implicate the Second Amendment,

the fact that the challengers’ case would have ended

at the threshold in other circuits is further reason for

this Court to grant review and set the record straight.

Exhibit A on the wrong side of the split is the

Tenth Circuit’s decision in RMGO. In 2023, Colorado

made it “unlawful for a person who is less than

twenty-one years of age to purchase a firearm,” either

in a “private firearms transfer[]” or from a “licensed

gun dealer[].” 121 F.4th at 104-05 (quoting Colo. Rev.

Stat. §§18-12-112(2)(f), -112.5(1)(a.5)). An advocacy

group as well as individuals “over the age of 18 but

under the age of 21” brought suit, arguing that the law

“infringed upon their Second Amendment right to

acquire firearms by prohibiting them from purchasing

them.” Id. at 105-06. After assuring itself that at least

one individual plaintiff had standing, see id. at 107-12,

the court turned to the merits. Despite holding that

18-to-20-year-olds are “part of ‘the people’ as defined

by the Second Amendment,” id. at 116, the Tenth

Circuit held that Colorado’s law—which, again, makes

it unlawful for that cohort to purchase any firearm

through any channel—does not even “implicate” the

Second Amendment. Id. at 120. The court’s “analysis”

therefore “end[ed]” without any inquiry into whether

a law that prohibits a subset of “the people” from

purchasing a firearm is consistent with our Nation’s

historical tradition. See id. at 113, 120.

9

It is difficult to overstate how wrong that is. With

the issues of “the people” and “arms” out of the way,

the threshold textual inquiry turns on whether the

challenged law restricts the ability to “keep” and

“bear” those arms. As Heller explained, “the most

natural reading of ‘keep Arms’ … is to ‘have weapons,’”

and “the natural meaning of ‘bear arms’ … implies …

the carrying of [a] weapon … for the purpose of

‘offensive or defensive action.’” 554 U.S. at 582-84. A

law banning 18-to-20-year-olds from purchasing

firearms obviously precludes those adults who would

like to take possession of firearms (“Arms”) to have

(“keep”) and carry (“bear”) from doing so. That suffices

to satisfy the threshold inquiry. A law that “restricts

[the] ability to bear or keep [a] firearm …

unquestionably implicates … Second Amendment

rights,” especially when—as here and in RMGO—it

does nothing else. United States v. Perez-Garcia, 96

F.4th 1166, 1181 (9th Cir. 2024).

That likely explains why most circuits have

coalesced around the conclusion that “the Second

Amendment’s text presumptively protects the act of

selling or transferring a firearm.” United States v.

Knipp, 138 F.4th 429, 435 (6th Cir. 2025); see also, e.g.,

Yukutake v. Lopez, 130 F.4th 1077, 1090 (9th Cir.

2025); Reese, 127 F.4th at 590 & n.2. After all, the

“right to keep and bear arms … ‘wouldn’t mean much’

without the ability to acquire arms,” Teixeira v. Cnty.

of Alameda, 873 F.3d 670, 677 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc)

(quoting Ezell v. City of Chicago, 651 F.3d 684, 704

(7th Cir. 2011)), which explains why cases dating back

150 years recognize that “[t]he right to keep arms[]

necessarily involves the right to purchase them,” id. at

10

678 (quoting Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. 165, 178

(1871)).

The Tenth Circuit nonetheless held that a law

that made it a crime for 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase

firearms did not restrict conduct covered by the

Second Amendment’s plain text at all. And adding

insult to injury, it blamed Heller. Invoking Heller’s

dictum that “laws imposing conditions and

qualifications on the commercial sale of arms” are

“presumptively lawful,” the Tenth Circuit held that

Colorado’s law—which, again, makes it unlawful for a

subset of law-abiding adult citizens to purchase a

firearm—fits within that category, and so deemed its

hands tied. RMGO, 121 F.4th at 119-20 (quoting

Heller, 554 U.S. at 626-27).

That makes no sense. To be sure, Heller clarified

in dictum that the decision should not “be taken to cast

doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession

of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws

forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places

such as schools and government buildings, or laws

imposing conditions and qualifications on the

commercial sale of arms.” 554 U.S. at 626-27. But a

criminal prohibition on the sale of arms to a subset of

“the people” is not in any sense a law “imposing

conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale

of arms”; it is a ban. And even if an age-based ban

could be understood as a condition or qualification on

commercial sale, it still would not fall within Heller’s

dictum because, as discussed further below, it is not a

“longstanding” one. See id. at 626.

Unlike a ban that carries criminal consequences,

conditions and qualifications of sale are things people

11

can actually satisfy. See Condition, Black’s Law

Dictionary (12th ed. 2024) (“an uncertain act or event

that,” if satisfied, “triggers or negates a duty to render

a promised performance”); Qualification, id.

(“qualities or properties (such as fitness or capacity)

inherently or legally necessary to make one eligible for

a position or office, or to perform a public duty or

function <voter qualification requires one to meet

residency, age, and registration requirements>”). For

instance, the requirement to secure a background

check is a “condition” on the sale of a firearm (or,

perhaps more precisely, a condition precedent to the

transfer of a firearm) because a seller can satisfy it by

procuring a background check, and a buyer can satisfy

it by submitting to one. To be sure, the seller may be

independently prohibited by law from transferring the

firearm if the buyer fails the check, see 18 U.S.C.

§922(d), but that does not change the fact that the

check itself is a “condition” of sale. Likewise, the

obligation to secure a Federal Firearms License to sell

firearms is a classic “condition”: One cannot lawfully

be engaged in the business of selling firearms without

obtaining a license demonstrating satisfaction of

certain prerequisites. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. §923(a).

An age-based ban like Colorado’s in RMGO or

Florida’s here does not fit that bill because neither the

seller nor the buyer cannot satisfy it. If the buyer has

not reached age 21, then there is nothing she or the

seller can do but wait. Laws that simply prohibit the

transfer of a firearm for a fixed period of time do not

impose a condition or qualification on the sale of arms.

In point of fact, Black’s Law Dictionary explicitly

defines “condition precedent” (under the umbrella

term “condition”) to exclude “a lapse of time.”

12

Condition, Black’s Law Dictionary (“An act or event,

other than a lapse of time, that must exist or occur

before a duty to perform something promised arises.”

(emphasis added)).

A court in Maine recently

recognized as much in holding that a state law

imposing a three-day waiting period to purchase a

firearm, even after a completed background check,

likely violates the Second Amendment, reasoning that

Heller’s “conditions and qualifications” dictum “does

not … extend to a standardless, temporary

disarmament measure.”

Beckwith v. Frey, 766

F.Supp.3d 123, 130-31 (D. Me. 2025). Florida’s law

requires some buyers to wait three years to purchase a

firearm; Maine’s “cooling-off period” looks modest by

comparison.

Even if age-based bans were “longstanding …

laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the

commercial sale of arms,” Heller, 554 U.S. at 626-27,

that would not help Florida’s cause or justify RMGO.

Heller did not say that the types of laws it discussed

do not implicate the Second Amendment. If that were

what the Court thought, then there would have been

no reason to discuss them in the first place, let alone

to describe them as only “presumptively” lawful. The

Court discussed them because such laws obviously

restrict conduct covered by the plain text of the Second

Amendment. Indeed, to say that laws prohibiting the

keeping or carrying of firearms, or imposing

restrictions on their acquisition, do not even implicate

the right to keep and bear arms would be to read the

Second Amendment out of the Constitution. And to

say that Heller embraced such a nonsensical position

would be to read the word “presumptively” out of its

13

dictum, as a law cannot violate a constitutional

provision that it does not even implicate.

That argument makes even less sense after

Bruen. “Bruen makes clear that text, history, and

tradition are the ‘[o]nly’ ways the Government can

justify a regulation that implicates Second

Amendment rights.” Perez-Garcia, 96 F.4th at 1177

(quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 17). Simply repeating

Heller's dictum about the "presumptive[] lawful[ness]”

of certain types of restrictions on arms-bearing

conduct thus will no longer do. That is not just

because the historical pedigree of those categories was

not squarely before the Heller Court (although that

should be reason enough). It is also because Bruen

was emphatic that “a court [may] conclude that” a

restriction on arms-bearing conduct “falls outside the

Second Amendment’s ‘unqualified command’” “[o]nly

if” the government proves that it “is consistent with

this Nation’s historical tradition.” 597 U.S. at 17

(emphasis added)); see also Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 69192 (“[W]hen the Government regulates arms-bearing

conduct, … it bears the burden to ‘justify its

regulation’” by showing that it “is consistent with the

principles that underpin our regulatory tradition”).

Far from exempting the categories in Heller’s

dictum from that rule, Bruen expressly applied it to

one of them. New York argued that the Sullivan Law

could be justified as a “law[] forbidding the carrying of

firearms in sensitive places.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30

(quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 626). Yet this Court did

not treat the law as presumptively constitutional

simply because New York made that argument. Nor

did it conclude that it must decide whether that was a

14

fair characterization to determine whether the law

implicated the Second Amendment.

It instead

rejected New York’s argument by scrutinizing it

against historical tradition, explaining that “there is

no historical basis for New York to effectively declare

the island of Manhattan a ‘sensitive place’ simply

because it is crowded and protected generally by the

New York City Police Department.” Id. at 31. Bruen

itself thus refutes the claim that laws that purportedly

fall into one of the categories Heller identified do not

“implicate” the right to keep and bear arms” at all.2

If Heller’s “conditions and qualifications” dictum

is malleable enough to encompass Florida’s or

Colorado’s law, then it is capacious enough to eclipse

the Second Amendment. A state could just as easily

impose a minimum age requirement of 150 years, or a

100-year waiting period for all firearms. Federal

courts have diligently policed states’ efforts to delay

their citizens’ exercise of other constitutional rights,

including the right to an abortion before Dobbs. See

Silvester v. Becerra, 138 S.Ct. 945, 951-52 (2018)

(Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari).

Allowing laws like Florida’s to take cover behind the

aegis of Heller’s dictum would subject the Second

Amendment to an amorphous constitutional “double

standard.” Id. at 951. This Court should take the

2 While that should likewise suffice to foreclose the argument

that Heller’s dictum entitled certain categories of laws to a formal

presumption of constitutionality, at the very least it forecloses

any argument that Heller immunized those categories from all

historical scrutiny. At most, that dictum simply shifts the

historical-tradition burden from the government to the plaintiff.

15

opportunity this case presents to make that clear once

and for all.

II. The Eleventh Circuit’s Historical Analysis Is

Deeply Flawed.

Because age-based firearm-sale restrictions

plainly implicate the Second Amendment, they are

constitutional only if they dovetail with “relevantly

similar” historical analogues. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 2829. Though Heller and Bruen gave some consideration

to historical sources from the Reconstruction era,

Bruen counsels that historical evidence significantly

postdating the Founding is of “secondary” value. Id.

at 37 (citing Gamble v. United States, 587 U.S. 678,

702 (2019)). Founding-era analogues are the gold

standard.

The Eleventh Circuit acknowledged that there are

no direct Founding-era analogues to firearm-purchase

restrictions based on age. App.30 (“[T]he Founding

era lacked express prohibitions on the purchase of

firearms….”). In fact, not only were 18-to-20-year-olds

allowed to purchase firearms; they were required

under federal law to enroll in the militia and to

“provide [themselves] with a good musket or firelock.”

Militia Act of 1792, §1, 1 Stat. 271. Moreover, of the

more than 250 militia laws enacted by the colonies and

the young states before and around the time the

Second Amendment was ratified, all but one—

abrogated more than three decades before

ratification—set the minimum militia service age at

18 or younger. David B. Kopel & Joseph Greenlee, The

Second Amendment Rights of Young Adults, 43 S. Ill.

Univ. L.J. 495, 533-34 (2019); accord Hirschfeld v.

ATF, 5 F.4th 407, 433 (4th Cir. 2021), vacated as moot,

16

14 F.4th 322 (4th Cir. 2021). As Judge Brasher noted

in dissent below, “there were no Founding-era laws

prohibiting young adults from purchasing any firearm

at all, much less anything like the total, criminal ban”

Florida has imposed.

App.152 (Brasher, J.,

dissenting).

Unable to find any true analogue, the Eleventh

Circuit observed that because 18-to-20-year-olds were

considered minors at the Founding, their legal

incapacity to contract, purchase items on credit, or

receive and keep their wages “impeded [them] from

acquiring firearms.” App.17. But that is not an

argument that there is a historical analogue; it is an

attempt to explain why there is not one. And it is an

argument that suffers from the same problem as the

argument that 18-to-20-year-olds are not part of “the

people.” After all, women and minorities likewise

suffered from legal disabilities that impeded their

ability as a practical manner to obtain firearms. Yet

no one would say that historical tradition would

therefore justify sex- and race-based restrictions on

Second Amendment rights—because the whole point

of eliminating those kinds of restrictions is to ensure

that people have both fundamental rights and the

means to exercise them.

The question, then, is not whether there is a

historical tradition of treating “minors” differently. As

discussed above, 18-to-20-year-olds are no longer

considered minors. Thus, the relevant question is

whether there is a historical tradition of age

restrictions on the Second Amendment rights of nonminors when that group enjoys other core rights. The

answer is no. In fact, Founding-era law required 18-

17

year-olds to serve in the militia, which demonstrates

that they were considered responsible enough to keep

and bear arms even though they were not entrusted

with all other rights shared by adults. If anything,

then, the notion that there is a historical tradition of

singling out Second Amendment rights for age-based

restrictions gets matters backward. In reality, our

Nation has long recognized that it would be

exceedingly perverse to insist that young adults be

prepared to take up arms in defense of their country,

yet nevertheless deem them too “irresponsible” to keep

and bear arms in defense of themselves and their

loved ones.

The Eleventh Circuit’s analogy flounders on the

“how” and “why” as well. The court’s historical survey

recounts a list of general legal impediments—contract

formation, access to credit, and wage-earning—that

would have incidentally made it more difficult for 18to-20-year-olds to purchase firearms (or any other

expensive thing). These generalized restrictions are a

far cry from Florida’s specific prohibition on firearm

transactions. They were not designed to restrict

access to firearms, and any effect they had on Second

Amendment rights was purely incidental.

The

Eleventh Circuit’s emphasis on Founding-era contract

voidability doctrine exemplifies the frailty of this

analogy: The fact that a minor in 1791 could choose to

void a contract for the purchase of a firearm bears no

resemblance to Florida’s law, which denies a minor

any choice to begin with.

The Eleventh Circuit’s gesture to Founding-era

legislation requiring parents to furnish arms for their

minor children’s militia service, see App.19-21,

18

likewise fails to establish a relevant historical

analogue. As the Third Circuit noted, “nothing in

those statutes says that 18-to-20-year-olds could not

purchase or otherwise acquire their own guns.” Lara,

125 F.4th at 445. At most, these laws raise the banal

inference that 18-to-20-year-olds in 1791 had a tough

time affording firearms, just as they might have had a

hard time purchasing, for example, newspapers or the

services of an attorney. No reasonable observer would

confuse these practical obstacles with a tradition of

legislatively singling out the right to keep and bear

arms for special restrictions based on age.

Finally,

the

Eleventh

Circuit

invoked

Reconstruction-era laws that, in the court’s telling,

prohibited the sale of firearms to persons under 21. As

discussed, and as the Eleventh Circuit acknowledged,

laws from the Reconstruction era are of secondary

importance to the Second Amendment analysis.

App.12. They cannot make up for the utter lack of

Founding-era legislation analogous to Florida’s law.

That said, the laws the Eleventh Circuit cites do not

say what the Eleventh Circuit thinks they do. Of the

20 state laws identified in the opinion, 13—Alabama,

Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin,

Iowa, North Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, Delaware,

Georgia, and Kansas—prohibit the sale of firearms not

to persons under the age of 21, but to minors. See

App.203-10. Another two—Maryland and the District

of Columbia—refer to “minor[s] under the age of

twenty-one years.” App.207, 209. Three others—

Indiana, Louisiana, and Wyoming—refer to persons

under the age of 21 in the main text, but their titles or

annotations specify that their purpose was to prohibit

19

the sale of firearms to minors.3 Only West Virginia

and Nevada’s laws banned firearm purchases purely

on the basis of age, without reference to a broader

regime of treating people that age as “minors.”

App.206-207. Two out of 20—passed 14 and 17 years

after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment,

respectively—constitute an aberration, not a

tradition.

At most, then, the court identified a historical

tradition of prohibiting minors, not young adults, from

purchasing firearms. But 18-to-20-year-olds are no

longer minors under current law; they are adults, with

a full complement of other fundamental rights. And

there is no tradition of prohibiting young adults from

purchasing firearms. Indeed, “[n]ever in the modern

era has the Supreme Court held that a fundamental

constitutional right could be abridged for a lawabiding adult class of citizens.” NRA, 714 F.3d at 336

(Jones, J., dissenting). Florida’s law, which purports

to do just that, is a historical anomaly that must be

struck down.

III. The Question Presented Is Exceptionally

Important, And This Case Is A Good Vehicle.

Courts should be vigorously protecting the Second

Amendment, not twisting themselves in knots to avoid

3 See An Act to Prohibit the Sale, Gift, or Bartering of Deadly

Weapons or Ammunition Therefore, to Minors, 1875 Ind. Act 59,

https://tinyurl.com/5443wn4k; An Act Making It a Misdemeanor

for Any Person to Sell, Give or Lease, to Any Minor, Any Pistol,

Bowie-Knife, Dirk or Any Weapons, Intended to Be Carried or

Used as a Concealed Weapon, 1890 La. Acts 39,

https://tinyurl.com/4uxn7kbc; 1890 Wyo. Terr. Sess. Laws 140,

§97, https://tinyurl.com/59suvcrz.

20

reckoning with it. Heller, 554 U.S. at 634 (cautioning

that courts must not “decide on a case-by-case basis

whether the right is really worth insisting upon”).

Nevertheless, since Heller and McDonald, states have

enacted novel legislation curtailing the right to keep

and bear arms, including the age restrictions

challenged in RMGO, Chavez, and the case below. By

refusing to acknowledge that acquiring firearms is

within the Second Amendment’s ambit, contorting

Heller’s “conditions and qualifications” dictum, and

misconstruing historical precedent, lower courts have

encouraged this misbehavior. The age restriction

cases vividly “illustrate[] why this Court must provide

more guidance” on the proper application of the HellerBruen-Rahimi framework. Harrel v. Raoul, 144 S.Ct.

2491, 2492 (2024) (Thomas, J.). Granting certiorari

here would give the Court tremendous return on

investment, enabling it to clear up several

fundamental Second Amendment issues at once that

are otherwise certain to recur.

Absent the Court’s intervention, lower courts will

continue

disfiguring

Second

Amendment

jurisprudence, producing a parade of ever-more

confused and contradictory opinions united only in

being “unmoored from both text and history.” Id. And

real, practical consequences will follow. The mean age

for an American gun-owner to first acquire his or her

own firearm is 22; for men, it is 19. See Kim Parker et

al., Pew Rsch. Ctr. America’s Complex Relationship

With

Guns

25

(June

22,

2017),

https://tinyurl.com/5abkf25w. An outsized share—

20%—of Americans who participate in firearmhunting and target shooting take up these activities

between the ages of 18 and 24.

See Outdoor

21

Foundation, 2022 Special Report on Hunting & the

Shooting

Sports

at

12,

26,

https://tinyurl.com/4792v65t (last visited June 20,

2025).

If age-based restrictions are allowed to

proliferate, the vitality of America’s sporting

traditions is in jeopardy. Such bans will also prevent

young adults from forming good firearm safety habits

early in life, when they are easiest to internalize, and

will “perversely assure[] that when such young adults

obtain [firearms], they do not do so through licensed

firearm[] dealers, where background checks are

required,” but rather through “the unregulated

market.” NRA, 714 F.3d at 346 (Jones, J., dissenting).

The time has come for this Court to clear the air,

vindicate the Second Amendment protections that our

Founders enshrined, and prevent the venerable

tradition of responsible firearm ownership from

disappearing from this country.

22

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, this Court should grant

the petition for certiorari.

Respectfully submitted,

LAWRENCE G. KEANE

PAUL D. CLEMENT

SHELBY BAIRD SMITH

ERIN E. MURPHY

NATIONAL

Counsel of Record

SHOOTING SPORTS MATTHEW D. ROWEN

FOUNDATION, INC. EVAN M. MEISLER*

400 N. Capital St., NW CLEMENT & MURPHY, PLLC

Washington, DC 20001 706 Duke Street

(202) 220-1340

Alexandria, VA 22314

(202) 742-8900

erin.murphy@clementmurphy.com

* Supervised by principals of the firm who

are members of the Virginia bar

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

June 20, 2025