{"id":112287,"date":"2025-09-22T10:05:54","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T15:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=112287"},"modified":"2025-09-22T10:05:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T15:05:54","slug":"112287","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=112287","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

DOJ Takes Troubling Position in Second Amendment Case<\/a><\/p>\n

The case\u00a0Reese v. ATF<\/em><\/a>\u00a0challenges the prohibition on 18-to-20-year-olds from purchasing handguns. Victorious at the Fifth Circuit, they\u2019re now working towards a final judgment at the district court level, but the Department of Justice has taken a position that’s not sitting well with Second Amendment advocates.<\/p>\n

After the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered an\u00a0opinion<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Reese v. ATF<\/em>, the case was remanded for final judgment to the\u00a0District Court for the Western District of Louisiana<\/a>. The circuit court concluded that \u201cthe Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among \u2018the people\u2019 whose right to keep and bear arms is protected.\u201d The plaintiffs filed\u00a0an important brief<\/a>\u00a0on Friday in support of their proposed judgment.<\/p>\n

The government ended up exhausting their timeline to appeal the case to the\u00a0U.S. Supreme Court<\/a>. When remanded back to district court, both the plaintiffs and the government filed proposed judgments because \u201ca good faith attempt to reach agreement with Government\u201d failed.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs\u00a0are proposing<\/a>\u00a0the government be enjoined from enforcing prohibitions on the sale of handguns to all eighteen-to-twenty-year-old members. The government\u00a0is requesting<\/a>\u00a0that the law be enjoined only \u201cwith respect to the identified and verified persons described\u201d in the proposed judgment. In short, the government essentially wants the order to apply only to the individual plaintiffs, not every member of the associations who are part of the lawsuit, which include the\u00a0Second Amendment Foundation<\/a>,\u00a0Firearms Policy Coalition<\/a>, and\u00a0Louisiana Shooting Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe laws challenged in this case prevent 18-to-20-year-old adult Americans from acquiring handguns or handgun ammunition in the ordinary commercial market. The Fifth Circuit has held that those laws and their supporting regulations are unconstitutional under the Second Amendment,\u201d the filing states. \u201cAnd now the Government has taken the position that even so, Plaintiffs should be entitled only to illusory relief and the Government should be free to continue to enforce these unconstitutional restrictions against Plaintiffs\u2019 affected members as though they never brought and won this suit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 19-page brief goes on to explain why the final judgment should not give deference to the government by delivering what would amount to an as-applied opinion. Given the amount of time it takes to bring such cases to completion, many plaintiffs are mooted out by coming of age before there are any final judgments\u2014something the government incorporated in their proposed order.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s at stake now is the scope of the injunction\u2013meaning, which young adults will be able to exercise their rights,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Second Amendment Foundation\u2019s Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. \u201cAlthough it chose not to appeal the Fifth Circuit\u2019s ruling, it is now the ATF\u2019s position that the scope of relief should be so narrow as to cover literally no one. That position is contrary to well-settled law. SAF sued on behalf of its members, and the relief SAF won in the Fifth Circuit flows to those very members. All SAF members should be covered by this injunction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSAF\u2019s victory in this case rightly applies to all of our members, and that is precisely what this brief makes clear,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. \u201cThe government cannot continue to trounce on the Second Amendment rights of young adults by trying to avoid the practical effectiveness of an injunction mandated by a federal circuit court.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Firearms Policy Coalition had some harsh\u00a0words<\/a>\u00a0for the Department of Justice. FPC said the government\u2019s brief was full of \u201cbrazen arguments\u201d and that \u201cthe DOJ is working to push all effective, cause-driven organizations \u2026 out of court altogether, and force people to pursue their rights through slow, complex, and expensive class-action lawsuits.\u201d FPC alleges that these moves are all part of a new government ploy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe DOJ’s cynical scheme to undermine associational standing and relief for our members is nothing but an attempt to put constitutional accountability out of the reach of ordinary Americans,” Firearms Policy Coalition President Brandon Combs\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in a statement. \u201cThe federal government, having lost on the merits, is now trying to rig the process. But we will not be deterred. While the government has placed FPC and our members in its crosshairs, we are proud to expose and oppose this dangerous strategy as we pursue a world of maximal liberty for all peaceable people.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re allegedly living at a time when the most pro-Second Amendment administration is in power. The government yielding by allowing the clock to run out on appealing to the High Court certainly was a win, but not if in the next breath they\u2019re saying that the relief the plaintiffs are seeking should be grossly limited. The Fifth Circuit was clear when it said that 18-to-20-year-olds are part of \u201cthe people,\u201d there should be no further argument\u2014yet here we are.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DOJ Takes Troubling Position in Second Amendment Case The case\u00a0Reese v. ATF\u00a0challenges the prohibition on 18-to-20-year-olds from purchasing handguns. Victorious at the Fifth Circuit, they\u2019re now working towards a final judgment at the district court level, but the Department of Justice has taken a position that’s not sitting well with Second Amendment advocates. After the … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,23,50,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucraps","category-courts","category-goobermint","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112288,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112287\/revisions\/112288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}