Former congresswoman Gabby Giffords and Emma Brown, the executive director of the gun control group Giffords founded, have released a short video sharing their objections to the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel’s recent opinion that Section 922(b)(1), which prohibits commercial sales of handguns to adults younger than 21, violates the Second Amendment.
The Trump administration is refusing to enforce a nearly 60-year-old federal protection that bans handgun sales to 18, 19, and 20-year-olds.
This is very bad. Our kids and communities deserve better. pic.twitter.com/v5ILmnYjBZ
— Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) September 22, 2026
I’m going to do my best to ignore the very weird optics of this video and focus on its message instead.
Why exactly is it “very bad, very bad” for adults under the age of 21 to be able to purchase handguns at retail? Well, according to Brown, the law has been in place since the 1960s “protecting Americans 18 through 20 from buying handguns,” which is a very odd way of saying it prohibits them from doing so.
In 1968 Congress enshrined that prohibition into law in order to do something about the “causal relationship between the easy availability of firearms other than a rifle or shotgun and juvenile and youthful criminal behavior,” claiming that “such firearms have been widely sold by federally licensed importers and dealers to emotionally immature or thrill-bent juveniles and minors prone to criminal behavior.”
At the time, 18-year-olds could serve in the military and be drafted to fight in Vietnam, but they couldn’t vote in federal elections. Today, though, 18 is generally considered the age of majority, and as DOJ has pointed out (along with many Second Amendment advocacy groups), there’s simply no tradition of barring young adults from exercising their Second Amendment right to possess and carry the most common tool for self-defense inside and outside the home.
“Kids, kids, kids,” said Gabby Giffords in the video above, and Emma Brown chimed in with “this is about protecting our kids.”
No, it’s not. “Kids” still can’t legally purchase any firearm at retail. Young adults, though, should be fully vested in their Second Amendment rights.
As it turns out, denying 18-to-20-year-olds the ability to lawfully purchase handguns didn’t even accomplish what Congress intended. Arrest rates for young adults continued to climb through the rest of the late 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, before generally leveling off between 1975 and 1985. In the latter half of the 1980s, though, arrests of young adults once again began to climb, and by 1990 the arrest rate for those 18-to-20 was nearly double what it was in 1970.
The violent crime arrest rate for that age group peaked in 1994, and has plunged over the past 30 years. In 1970, there were approximately 450 arrests for violent crime per 100,000 18-to-20-year-olds. In 2020, that number was about 350 per 100,000.
Is that because those young adults can’t buy a handgun at a gun store? Since arrest rates for other age groups have seen similar declines, Section 922(b)(1) isn’t likely the cause of less crime among those 18 to 20.
All of which is to say that even if there was no constitutional argument in favor of scrapping the ban, the data shows that the ban has been ineffective at preventing young criminals from accessing firearms. Law-abiding 18-to-20-year-olds, on the other hand, have largely been stymied, and there are far more law-abiding young adults than violent criminals in that age group. From just a practical standpoint, the law does more harm than good.
But there is also a constitutional argument to make, and it’s an important one, even if Giffords and Brown refuse to acknowledge it. While there are plenty of laws from the Founding Era imposing regulations and restrictions on minors and firearms, there aren’t any that restrict adults from keeping and bearing arms because of their age. Section 922(b)(1) is a thoroughly modern invention without any historical analogue, and as such is in conflict with the Second Amendment.
Some courts, like the Fourth Circuit, have reached the opposite conclusion, but they’ve had to look to places like contract law, not gun laws, to find the evidence they’re looking for. The “infancy doctrine” voided any contracts signed by minors, which was close enough for the appellate court to justify the sales ban on young adults.
Other circuits have disagreed, and even if the DOJ does stop enforcing 922(b)(1), the issue of when our Second Amendment rights kick in will have to be addressed by the Supreme Court at some point… and hopefully sooner rather than later.
I do understand the concern, and given the lack of maturity on display from some young adults, it’s pretty easy for even gun owners to have some reservations about the DOJ’s position. But that age group can already purchase rifles and shotguns at retail (at least under federal law). If they can buy those, why should they be blocked from buying a handgun?
Will violent crime among young adults increase? At some point, yes, but not because of the change in DOJ’s stance. Violent crime among that cohort more than doubled in the decades after 922(b)(1) was put in place, so it clearly wasn’t great at stopping young criminals from obtaining a firearm.
From both a constitutional and common sense standpoint, 922(b)(1) is deeply problematic. If your goal is to reduce gun ownership as much as possible, though, it’s a valuable tool. That’s why the gun control lobby is melting down, and it’s why they’ll try to undo the DOJ’s new policy the first chance they get.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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