(FreedomBeacon.com)- Last week, the White House made it “very clear” that President Biden supports possible legislation to increase the minimum age to purchase long guns from 18 to 21.
During Thursday’s White House press briefing, a CBS reporter asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre if the president would support raising the legal age required to purchase rifles.
Jean-Pierre said that Biden has made it “very clear” in recent remarks that he didn’t believe it made sense for 18-year-olds to be able to legally purchase “an assault weapon.” She said the president was “very clear” about that when he spoke on Tuesday after the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
After the shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in May, Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office announced that she will be pushing ahead with legislation to ban the sale of semi-automatic rifles from anyone under the age of 21.
In a May 19 statement announcing her Age 21 Act, Feinstein said that the shooting in Buffalo showed “the tragic consequences when young people can so easily obtain a deadly assault weapon.” While she conceded that the bill wouldn’t prevent mass shootings, it would be “a small step” to bringing “some sense of sanity back to our nation.”
Like Biden, Feinstein claimed that it made no sense that someone under 21 can’t buy a handgun “or even beer,” but can buy “an assault weapon.”
But barring adults ages 18 to 20 from purchasing a rifle may not be as easy as the Democrats hope.
Just last month, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the California law barring adults under 21 from purchasing semi-automatic rifles was unconstitutional.
In his decision, Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson argued that America exists due to the “heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army.” Nelson said the 9th Circuit reaffirms that the Constitution “still protects the right that enabled their sacrifice: the right of young adults to keep and bear arms.”
