A federal judge ruled that a Texas law banning 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying handguns in public is unconstitutional

• A federal judge ruled Texas's law banning 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying handguns in public is unconstitutional.
• The judge argued Second Amendment rights apply to 18-to-20-year-olds and should be upheld.

A federal judge in the Northern District of Texas ruled the state's law banning 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying handguns in public is unconstitutional.

In the court ruling viewed by Insider, District Court Judge Mark Pittman said the Texas law is unconstitutional because the Second Amendment does not set an age restriction.

"The Second Amendment refers only to 'the people,' which various Founding-Era dictionaries define as a reference to those who make up the 'national community," Pittman wrote in his opinion.

Pittman argued that 18-to-20-year-olds are a part of the "the people" referred to in the Second Amendment because they are both considered members of the political and national community.

He added that militias at the time the Constitution was written included minors.

Since the Second Amendment was put into place to protect those in the militia, Pittman said it would, therefore, protect the right of "law-abiding 18-to-20-year-olds" to carry handguns in public.

The case was brought by Firearms Policy Coalition, a pro-gun nonprofit organization.

"Texas cannot point to a single Founding Era law that prohibited 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying a functional firearm for self-defense, because not only did no such law exist, but those individuals are an important reason why we have a Bill of Rights in the first place," Cody J. Wisniewski, the coalition's Senior Attorney for Constitutional Litigation, said, according to CNN.

"And young people have just as much a right to keep and bear arms in public as adults over the age of 21," Wisniewski said.

This ruling comes on the heels of a June Supreme Court ruling that dramatically expanded Second Amendment rights.

In New York State Rifle Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court struck down a century-old gun permit law that required New York residents to seek a license to carry a gun outside their homes.

The Court's six conservative justices agreed that New York's law was unconstitutional.