A federal legal storm is brewing in the Garden State, where gun rights advocates and a young would-be handgun owner are suing New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and other state law enforcement officials. Their charge: that New Jersey’s and federal law’s age-based bans on handgun ownership violate the U.S. Constitution.
Filed Monday in federal court, the complaint comes with a sharpened edge, echoing the gun debate’s national tremors. Plaintiffs Lily Hague, the Second Amendment Foundation Inc., and the New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate argue the law unfairly targets young adults between the ages of 18 and 20, stripping them of core constitutional rights.
A Clash Between History and Modern Law
According to the lawsuit, no historical precedent from the nation’s founding justifies barring those under 21 from owning handguns. Hague, who meets every requirement for legal handgun possession except for her age, claims the ban shuts her out of rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
In the filing, she points to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which emphasized the importance of historical analogs when evaluating gun laws. Hague asserts that young adults in early America were compelled by law to arm themselves, not barred from doing so.
