On Thursday, July 23, a federal judge rejected Second and Fourteenth Amendment challenges to federal and Connecticut laws prohibiting anyone under 21 years old from purchasing, possessing, and carrying a handgun.
District Judge Sarala V. Nagala of the District of Connecticut issued the decision, Succow, et al. v. Blanche, et al. (2026).
Legal Framework
Plaintiffs Zachary Succow and Samuel Towne—19-year-old Connecticut residents—argued that federal and Connecticut statutory schemes restricting the ability of 18- to 20-year-olds to purchase, possess, and carry handguns violate their constitutional rights on a facial and as-applied basis.
Federal Law
On the federal side (“Federal Framework”), Plaintiffs challenged 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1) and its regulatory counterpart, 27 C.F.R. § 478.99(b)(1). Both laws prohibit federally licensed firearms dealers from selling or delivering any firearm other than a shotgun or rifle—including handguns—to individuals under the age of 21.
Connecticut Law
Plaintiffs also challenged Connecticut’s statutory scheme (“Connecticut Framework”), which restricts not only the commercial purchase and transfer of handguns but also their carrying and possession by individuals under 21.
Permitting Process: Connecticut imposes a two-step permitting process for carrying a handgun. First, individuals must apply for a temporary state carry permit with their local jurisdiction’s permitting authority. The permitting authority cannot issue a temporary permit unless the applicant completes, within two years prior to the application, an approved course on the safety and use of firearms. The permitting authority likewise cannot issue a temporary permit to a person under the age of 21. The permitting authority forwards approved temporary permits to the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection (“DESPP”) Commissioner, who then issues a permanent state permit.
Relevant Provisions: Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-34 makes it a Class C felony to sell, give, or otherwise transfer a pistol or revolver to a person under 21. Separately, Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-33 bars individuals under 21 from purchasing or receiving a pistol or revolver without a valid carry permit. A related statute, Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-36f, requires a pistol eligibility certificate from DESPP to purchase a handgun. Those under 21 cannot obtain that certificate, which is separate from and only available to individuals that have completed Connecticut’s two-step permit process described above. Lastly, Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-35 prohibits carrying a pistol or revolver without a permit. Connecticut is a concealed carry state.
Alternative Theory
As an alternative theory, Plaintiffs sought to compel Connecticut to rely on the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System (“NICS”) for private party-to-party handgun transfers, rather than the State’s own transfer-authorization process administered by the DESPP.
The Parties
Both plaintiffs are Connecticut residents under the age of 21 seeking to acquire handguns for self-defense. Towne had completed the handgun safety course required to apply for Connecticut’s temporary permit. Towne otherwise met the eligibility criteria under federal and state law but for his age, though he never actually applied for a permit. Succow, by contrast, had not completed the requisite course to apply for a temporary permit, nor applied for said permit. Two Second Amendment advocacy organizations, the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and the Second Amendment Foundation, joined as co-plaintiffs.
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche was the sole defendant for Plaintiffs’ federal challenge. For the state challenge, defendants included the police chiefs of Seymour and Norwich, Connecticut; the Commissioner of DESPP; and two Connecticut State’s Attorneys.
The Opinion
Standing
The court first addressed standing, reaching a split result. Succow lacked standing to challenge the Connecticut Framework because he had not completed the requisite course for a temporary permit. Succow, however, had standing to challenge the Federal Framework. Towne, fulfilling the course requirement, had standing to challenge both frameworks.
Because neither Succow nor Towne had demonstrated any intention to obtain a handgun via private-party transfer, the court found that both plaintiffs lacked standing to pursue their alternative theory.
Facial Challenges to Federal and State Frameworks
The court emphasized that although Plaintiffs framed their challenge around 18- to 20-year-olds specifically, both statutory frameworks apply to all individuals under 21. Accordingly, Plaintiffs had not shown either framework to be facially unconstitutional.
Plaintiffs’ As-Applied Challenge to Federal Framework
Applying the two-step framework from New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), the court found that, while Plaintiffs met their initial burden of showing that the Second Amendment’s plain text covers their conduct, the government carried its burden at step two of demonstrating that the Federal Framework’s age-based restriction on commercial handgun sales is consistent with the nation’s history and tradition of firearms regulation.
The court noted the open question of whether courts should evaluate laws falling within the “presumptively lawful” categories from District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) at Bruen step one or two. Although it found the Ninth and Tenth Circuits’ perspectives—that laws fitting into such categories fail at Bruen step one—persuasive, the court determined “that it need not decide this issue for purposes of this decision” given Plaintiffs’ challenge fails “even without applying a presumption of lawfulness.”
Bruen Step One: Defendant Blanche did not contest that the plain text of the Second Amendment covers Plaintiffs’ conduct. Thus, Plaintiffs passed step one.
Bruen Step Two: Before evaluating historical analogues, the court rejected Plaintiffs’ argument that a “nuanced” historical analysis was unnecessary because the case did not involve unprecedented societal concerns or technological changes. Judge Nagala explained, “[t]he Supreme Court did not suggest that a court must make some type of predicate finding” of such concerns or changes “in order to conduct a fulsome historical analysis, as Plaintiffs suggest.”
On the historical record itself, the court found the Federal Framework consistent in principle with the historical inability at the Founding for minors under 21 to enter into contracts for the sale of commercial goods. Because commercial handgun transfers function similarly to a point-of-sale transaction, the court explained, the “how” was sufficiently similar. So, too, was the “why,” as both the Founding-era restrictions and the Federal Framework reflected “a societal consensus that individuals under the age of twenty-one lacked the requisite judgment and maturity.”
The court went on to reject two of Plaintiffs’ counterarguments. First, it found the absence of historical laws barring adults generally from acquiring handguns to be irrelevant. This is because, the court detailed, the operative question is whether the Federal Framework is sufficiently analogous to historical burdens on 18- to 20-year-olds, regardless of the age at which society considers such individuals to be “adults” under the law. Second, the court distinguished evidence that minors served in militias from any showing that minors could independently purchase their own weapons. Specifically, the court cited a 1793 Delaware militia law and a 1796 Connecticut militia statute, under which minors served without purchasing service weapons.
Towne’s As-Applied Challenge to Connecticut Framework
Connecticut’s Framework, which restricts the commercial purchase and transfer of handguns and their carrying and possession by individuals under 21, was likewise constitutional as-applied to Towne. Regarding Connecticut’s carrying and possession provisions, Judge Nagala found that the State met its Bruen step-two burden of showing consistency with the nation’s history and tradition of firearms regulation through Reconstruction-era, rather than Founding-era, analogues.
Bruen Step One: The court assumed “without deciding that eighteen- to twenty-year-olds are part of ‘the people’ for purposes of the Second Amendment.” Because the plain text of the Second Amendment covered Towne’s conduct, he passed step one.
Bruen Step Two: Due to Connecticut’s commercial sale and transfer restrictions operating similarly to the Federal Framework’s point-of-sale restrictions, the court found them constitutional for the same reasons.
Connecticut’s carrying and possession restrictions, on the other hand, required a separate analysis. The court found the State’s Founding-era analogues insufficient. First, while minors lacked significant levels of independence at the time of the Founding, “parental control over a minor’s actions does not necessarily equate to a governmental or common law requirement that minors could not possess handguns.” Second, Founding-era university and campus militia laws did not show that such laws restricted minors from possessing and carrying handguns. The court characterized said laws as reflecting guardians’ judgment over students living away from home, applicable only to a small subset of the population, and—aside from a single 1810 Georgia policy—inapplicable once students returned home for the summer. The court also found Defendants’ eighteen Founding-era state laws addressing youths and firearms concerned the discharging of weapons as opposed to their carrying or possession.
Rather than treating this Founding-era silence as fatal to Connecticut’s framework, the court applied guidance from the Second Circuit. Under Antonyuk v. James, 120 F.4th 941 (2d Cir. 2024), a lack of Founding-era history is an “especially weak indicator of constitutionality” where a case involves new circumstances unimaginable at the Founding. The district court explained that industrialization led to the proliferation of more accurate and lethal mass-produced handguns. Alongside urbanization, these conditions prompted a wave of Reconstruction-era legislation addressing a category of weapon and risk that did not exist at the Founding. Accordingly, Defendants’ lack of sufficient Founding-era analogues was not determinative.
The court then addressed Defendants’ Reconstruction-era analogues, noting Antonyuk’s (2d Cir.) direction that “the understanding that prevailed when the States adopted the Fourteenth Amendment” is relevant to the inquiry. The court found three Reconstruction-era laws—an 1883 Wisconsin law, an 1883 Kansas law, and an 1885 Nevada law—that completely prohibited the possession and carrying of handguns by individuals under 21 “dead ringer[s]” for Connecticut’s Framework. The court also pointed to an 1875 Indiana law and an 1890 Wyoming law prohibiting the sale of concealable pistols. Because these laws effectively worked to “prohibit the same behavior (the carrying and possession of handguns by individuals under the age of twenty-one) that the Connecticut Framework prohibits, doing so through the means lawmakers considered most effective at the time,” they matched both the “how” and “why.” Additional statutes from Kentucky (1873), Missouri (1879), Delaware (1881), West Virginia (1882), and Washington, D.C. (1892) likewise cut against Plaintiff Towne. The court explained that these statutes, which restricted carrying and concealment of pistols by all persons, shared at least part of the same protective rationale as Connecticut’s laws.
Finally, the court rejected Plaintiff Towne’s reliance on an 1868 Oregon law which read in part: “Every white male citizen of this state above the age of sixteen years, shall be entitled to have, hold, and keep, for his own use and defense, the following firearms, to wit: . . . one revolving pistol.” That law, the court explained, was the only law in the trial record referencing the Second Amendment’s scope for under-21 individuals, making it an outlier. The law was also, on its face, discriminatory along racial and gender lines, limiting its interpretive value under the Supreme Court’s guidance that such “tainted artifacts” cannot illuminate the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms.
The court also rejected Plaintiff Towne’s argument that, because Reconstruction-era laws only applied to “dangerous and unusual weapons,” they cannot serve as analogues for the Connecticut Framework, which regulates handguns in common use today. The court reasoned that such weapons were in fact popular during the Reconstruction-era despite their danger, prompting society’s response to limit their proliferation among minors.
