Here’s Why It May Take Months For DOJ’s Latest Memo To Benefit 18-Year-Old Gun Owners

 A top official with a pro-Second Amendment group told the Daily Caller News Foundation that gun owners may take time to benefit from a Justice Department (DOJ) memo finding that a nearly-60-year-old gun law prohibiting handgun sales to adults under 21 violates the Second Amendment.

The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued a memo Thursday declaring that the federal law prohibiting handgun sales to 18-20-year-old adults was unconstitutional in light of the Bruen and Wolford decisions. Gun Owners of America (GOA) Director of Federal Affairs Aidan Johnston said that the change may take a while to trickle to local gun stores as he described the implications of the memo.

“It’s a huge deal,” Johnston told the DCNF. “It’s a huge admission from the Trump administration and the Department of Justice about when certain federal laws that are completely unconstitutional. GOA’s been banging that, beating that drum for many years now. It’s just great to finally see that recognition from the administration.”

Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul vowed that New York would still prohibit such sales at the state level.

“Not in New York,” Hochul posted on X Saturday. “No teenager should be able to walk into a gun store and buy a handgun. Our laws don’t allow it and that’s not changing.”

In the 49-page memo, Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser reviewed whether current federal laws regarding handgun sales were still constitutional in light of recent Supreme Court rulings. An ATF spokesperson told the DCNF that the agency’s counsel was still reviewing questions about the OLC memo.

“Our laws deem an eighteen-year-old ‘mature enough to be drafted, vote, serve as a juror, and be sentenced to death.’ One such eighteen-year-old represented the United States at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, shooting skeet,” the DOJ memo opened. “Yet, due to statutes predicated on concerns over an eighteen-year-old’s ability to handle a pistol as a responsible adult, it would have been a federal felony if a licensed dealer had sold her such a firearm before she left or after she returned to her studies at the University of Texas at Arlington.”

“You have asked whether that restriction may be enforced against otherwise law-abiding citizens between the ages of eighteen and twenty who seek to purchase  a handgun consistent with the individual right to keep and bear arms recognized by District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and ‘fleshed out,’ [by] Wolford v. Lopez, 146 S. Ct. 2032, 2043 (2026), in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022),” the memo continued. “It may not. Section 922(b)(1) and (c)(1) may not be enforced to impose criminal penalties on dealers who sell handguns to a class of law-abiding adults who, in nearly every other relevant respect, are members of the political community.”

Johnston noted OLC had previously stepped in with an August memo after the DOJ withdrew an appeal of a federal court’s ruling that a ban on carrying firearms in post offices was unconstitutional. In April, DOJ issued a memo questioning a ban on mailing firearms, citing the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, prompting the USPS to prepare new regulations to allow the mailing of firearms.

“It seems like the next step, the next logical step, would be an ATF regulation implementing this OLC memo,” Johnston told DCNF. “And so we hope to see ATF take up that regulation soon.”

Johnston said the process might take a matter of months, especially as the DOJ sought to ensure that implementing regulations could not be overturned in court.

“The agency will publish a notice of proposed rulemaking. Then you’ve got the comment period. Then when the comment period closes, it has to go all the way back from the agency all the way up to the White House for approval again,” Johnston said. “So, you know, it’s just probably a six-to-twelve-month process, depending on how fast they’re able to move. They have 34 other ATF rules in the pipeline before, so I don’t think it’s like they’re twiddling their thumbs. They have a lot of work to do and it’s probably going to take some time.”