Joseph Stempel
Reuters
October 26, 2012

Photo by Joshuashearn (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

The United States may ban federally licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to people under age 21, an appeals court ruled on Thursday, in a defeat for the National Rifle Association.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Houston rejected the NRA’s argument that 18- to 20-year-olds had a right to buy the guns under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment.

A unanimous three-judge panel said Congress, in a law dating from 1968, adopted the sales ban to help curb violent crime. It also said that the nation’s founders and 19th-century courts and commentators believed that disarming specific groups did not trample on the right to bear arms.

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