The Second Amendment Foundation today filed a federal lawsuit in Minnesota, challenging that state’s ban on concealed carry by young adults between the ages of 18 and 21, alleging the ban violates the Second and 14th Amendment rights of those citizens.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S District Court for the District of Minnesota. The case is known as Worth v. Harrington.

Joining SAF are the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, Firearms Policy Coalition and three private citizens in the affected age group. Defendants are John Harrington, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, plus three county sheriffs, Mille Lac County Sheriff Don Lorge, Douglas County Sheriff Troy Wolbersen and Washington County Sheriff Dan Starry, in their individual and official capacities.

“We recognize the rights of law-abiding young adults to vote, join the military, sign contracts, start businesses, get married and do other things,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “but when it comes to exercising one of the most basic fundamental rights protected by the Constitution, suddenly we treat them like children. You shouldn’t be able to have it both ways.

“Minnesota law prohibits private citizens from carrying guns outside the home or vehicle without a permit,” he added, “but the state does not issue permits to anyone under age 21. This is patently unfair to an entire class of citizens who have otherwise achieved ‘majority status’ to exercise these other rights and privileges, but their right to keep and bear arms is kept off-limits. Young adults between eighteen and twenty-one were fully protected by the Second Amendment at the time of its ratification. Hundreds of statutes from the colonial and founding eras required 18-to-20-year-olds to keep and bear arms.”

The time has come, Gottlieb said, for courts to remedy this situation and eliminate what amounts to a double standard.

“You either have the rights of an adult, or you don’t,” he observed. “Rights are an all-or-nothing package, whether you are 18 or 81. This inconsistency in law needs to be fixed.”

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