Key Takeaways
- Melody Boyer and Natasha Rousseau, alongside gun rights organizations, filed a lawsuit against Colonel Jeffrey S. Katz regarding Virginia’s handgun purchase regulations.
- The lawsuit challenges two statutes: a ban on handgun purchases by those under 21 and a requirement for private firearm sales to undergo background checks.
- Past rulings from the Lynchburg Circuit Court established rights for adults under 21 to purchase handguns, adding weight to the plaintiffs’ argument.
- The complaint seeks a declaratory judgment and an injunction to stop enforcement of the challenged statutes, which plaintiffs argue criminalize private gun sales.
- Boyer v. Katz raises questions about whether the General Assembly can impose restrictions that contradict judicial findings on firearm rights for young adults.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
LYNCHBURG, VA — Two individual plaintiffs, Melody Boyer and Natasha Rousseau, joined by Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, the Virginia Citizens Defense League, and the Virginia Citizens Defense Foundation, have filed suit in the Circuit Court for the City of Lynchburg against Colonel Jeffrey S. Katz, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, in his official capacity. Boyer v. Katz asks the court to declare two Virginia statutes unconstitutional under Article I, Section 13 of the Virginia Constitution and to stop the State Police from enforcing them.
The first statute is Va. Code § 18.2-308.7(C), which makes it unlawful for “any person younger than 21 years of age” to “knowingly and intentionally purchase a handgun or assault firearm anywhere in the Commonwealth.” That subsection is new. HB 1525, reenrolled in the 2026 reconvened session and captioned as an emergency measure, amended § 18.2-308.7 to add the under-21 purchase ban and made a violation a Class 1 misdemeanor. GOA had flagged the bill back in February as one of more than 25 gun control bills still alive after crossover. The second statute is Va. Code § 18.2-308.2:5, which the complaint describes as criminalizing the private sale of firearms unless the buyer first completes a government-administered background check.
The choice of courthouse is the story. The complaint opens by reminding the Lynchburg Circuit Court of its own rulings. In Elhert v. Settle in 2020, according to the filing, this court applied a text-and-history analysis and recognized “the right of adults under 21 to purchase a handgun, the ‘quintessential self-defense weapon,’” borrowing that phrase from Heller. In Wilson v. Settle on December 17, 2024, the complaint says the court “reaffirm[ed] its earlier ruling” that “[i]n Virginia, persons 18 to 20 years of age have a right to bear arms.” And in that litigation the court enjoined the State Police from enforcing § 18.2-308.2:5 because, in the court’s words as quoted in the complaint, it operated to prohibit “the private sale of handguns to adults under 21 years of age.”
The complaint draws the line from that history to today. The background-check statute, it explains, never expressly barred 18-to-20-year-olds from buying a handgun. It simply “required all firearm purchases to be subject to a background check,” and that mechanism is what the court found unconstitutional as applied to young adults. With HB 1525, the General Assembly wrote the purchase ban directly into the Code. So the plaintiffs are asking the same court that already found a right for 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase handguns to look at a statute that now says, in plain words, that they cannot.
The plaintiffs do not stop at the age question. They argue the two statutes “not only prohibit 18-to-20-year-old adult Virginians from purchasing handguns and pejoratively named ‘assault firearms,’ but they also criminalize the private marketplace of firearms that existed in Virginia for centuries.” That second half matters to every Virginian who has ever sold a rifle to a neighbor, not just to the under-21 crowd.
On relief, the filing asks for a declaratory judgment under Va. Code § 8.01-184, which is the court formally stating what the law is, and for a temporary and then permanent injunction under Va. Code § 8.01-620 et seq., which is a court order telling the superintendent, his successors and agents, and any law enforcement agency with notice of the order to stop enforcing the two statutes.
These are allegations in a complaint. The court has not ruled, no case number was assigned when the filing was prepared, and the Commonwealth will get its chance to answer.
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What stands out to me is how direct the collision is. A trial court in Lynchburg said, twice, that adults under 21 have a right to bear arms in Virginia and that the state could not use the background-check law to shut them out of buying a handgun. The response from Richmond was a statute that shuts them out by name. Whether the General Assembly can do expressly what this court already said it could not do indirectly is the question Boyer v. Katz puts on the table. Part of a serious carry mindset is knowing exactly what the law in your state allows you to buy and carry, and my Virginia concealed carry guide covers the permit side. The purchase side is now in front of a judge.
I will continue tracking Boyer v. Katz as it moves through the Circuit Court for the City of Lynchburg.
Legislative data provided by LegiScan (CC BY 4.0, legiscan.com).
