(TheLastPatriotNews.com) According to local media reports, 18-20-year-old college students in Texas are now receiving concealed carry firearm permits on campuses and in businesses as per an August 2022 ruling by a US district judge.
The development came after, on December 21, 2022, Texas terminated its efforts to appeal the August 25, 2022, ruling by District Court Judge Mark Pittman, which had annulled a state regulation prohibiting 18-20-year olds from carrying firearms in public for self-defense.
Pittman based his decision on the 2022 US Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
18–20-year-olds in Texas are now applying for concealed carry handgun permits, according to a report by The Dallas Morning News, as cited by Breitbart News.
It quoted Michael Cargill of Central Texas Gun Works, who said 19-year-olds had already attended his concealed carry classes. He made clear his expectations that the number of 18–20-year-olds in attendance to grow.
“As more people find out, there’s going to be an influx,” Cargill predicted.
The August 2022 ruling by US District Court Judge Mark Pittman declared the Texas law that banned 18-20-year-olds from carrying handguns in public unconstitutional because it contradicted the Second Amendment and US history.
He noted that the Second Amendment did not set an age restriction on firearm possession, while minors participated in state militias in the early history of the United States.
Before that, in June, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that expended gun owners’ rights to carry firearms outside their homes, increasing the threshold required for imposing gun restrictions.
Pittman’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the Firearms Policy Coalition, a gun rights nonprofit, which has also challenged similar state-level bans in Pennsylvania and California.
“Texas cannot point to a single Founding Era law that prohibited 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying a functional firearm for self-defense, because not only did no such law exist, but those individuals are an important reason why we have a Bill of Rights in the first place,” said Cody Wisniewski, the nonprofit’s Senior Attorney for Constitutional Litigation.
“And young people have just as much a right to keep and bear arms in public as adults over the age of 21,” Wisniewski added.
The June 2022 US Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen saw the annulment of a New York law that had restricted the carrying of concealed handguns outside the home.
In the decision, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that state gun law standards had to be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition” and “with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding.”
The resulting Supreme Court ruling has enabled “much more aggressive challenges” to firearm regulation laws because some of them bear no resemblance to gun regulation or attitudes from when the United States was established, Breitbart points out.
What is your opinion? Are you glad to see young adults exercising their 2nd Amendment rights? Share your view by emailing [email protected]. Thank you.
College students aged 18–20 are getting Texas concealed handgun permits to carry firearms for self-defense on college campuses and in businesses around the Lone Star State. https://t.co/bFSL08F5ou
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 27, 2023
