In the Interest of C.P.
Held: Subsections of AUUW and UPF statutes, imposing age-based restrictions on firearms possession by those under 21 and 18 years of age, respectively, do not violate Second Amendment, either facially or as-applied to 16-year-old minor-respondent.
¶ 2 Sixteen-year-old minor-respondent, C.P., was adjudicated delinquent on one count each of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon (AUUW) and unlawful possession of a firearm (UPF). He claims that the relevant statutory provisions violate the second amendment, both facially and as applied to him.
¶ 3 True, these precedents pre-date New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). All the same, they were decided on precisely the grounds of “text, as informed by history,” that Bruen now requires. Id. at 2127. This point bears emphasis, so we will linger on it for a moment, even though the citations to Mosley, Jordan G., and Aguilar suffice, on their own, to dispose of this case.
¶ 4 The AUUW statute prohibits anyone under the age of 21 from possessing a handgun outside the home, unless the person is engaged in certain specified lawful activities that are not relevant here.
¶ 5 In the wake of District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), the state and federal courts “coalesced” around a two-part test for evaluating the constitutionality of a firearm regulation under the second amendment. See Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2125. Our supreme court adopted its version of this test in Wilson v. County of Cook, 2012 IL 112026.
¶ 6 In the first step of the Wilson analysis, the court conducts a “textual and historical inquiry” to determine whether the challenged law regulates conduct that was understood to fall within the scope of the second amendment‘s protections at the time of ratification. Id. ¶ 41. If the regulated conduct falls outside the scope of the amendment, it is categorically unprotected. Id.
¶ 8 The prevailing two-step inquiry was “one step too many” for Bruen, which held that means-end scrutiny does not apply to the second amendment. Id. “Instead, the government must affirmatively prove that its firearm regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.” Id. The inquiry thus begins with the threshold question whether the “Second Amendment‘s plain text covers an individual‘s conduct.” Id. at 2129-30. If so, the amendment “presumptively protects that conduct,” and “[t]he government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation‘s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Id. at 2130. Full stop.
¶ 9 This is just an elaboration of what the lower courts had been doing in “[s]tep one of the predominant framework.” Id. at 2127. After Bruen, this textual and historical inquiry is always dispositive. But even before Bruen, our supreme court found it dispositive, anyway, whenever the challenged law regulates the possession of firearms by people under the age of 21. The laws challenged here have never been justified by application of the means-end scrutiny that Bruen eliminated.
¶ 10 Consider subsection (a)(3)(I) of the AUUW statute. Like 16-year-old respondent here, the 19-year-old defendant in Mosley, 2015 IL 115872, ¶¶ 5-6, was convicted under this subsection
¶ 11 Relying on its decision in Aguilar, 2013 IL 112116, various cases cited in Aguilar, and thus, by extension, the historical sources cited in those cases, the supreme court held that “the restriction on persons under the age of 21 who are not engaged in lawful hunting activities is both historically rooted and not a core conduct subject to second amendment protection.” Mosley, 2015 IL 115872, ¶ 37.
¶ 12 The supreme court found it unnecessary in Mosley to rehash the well-worn historical evidence of a national tradition of firearm regulations applying to minors under 21 years of age. Id. ¶ 36. And we will not rehash it either, except to add, by way of context, that the cutoff age of 21 has always reflected the universally recognized age of majority from the time of the founding until well into the twentieth century. See, e.g., William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. 1 at 463 (1st ed. 1765) (“So that full age in male or female, is twenty one years * * * who till that time is an infant, and so styled in law.“).
¶ 13 The key point is that Mosley drew the second-amendment line at age 21, and it did so based on the historical meaning of a textual term (“the People“) and the national tradition of age-based firearm regulation. The supreme court thus held that subsection (a)(3)(I) “passes the first part of the Wilson analysis” and thus that “a second half analysis under Wilson“—which is to say, means-end scrutiny—“is unnecessary.” Mosley, 2015 IL 115872, ¶ 37.
¶ 14 The only factual difference between this case and Mosley is that respondent here is 16,
¶ 15 Respondent here was also convicted under subsection (a)(1) of the UPF statute.
¶ 16 To reiterate: our supreme court has never relied on means-end scrutiny in upholding the challenged subsections of the AUUW and UPF statutes. Rather, it has held these sections to be firmly justified by text and historical tradition. So the “doctrinal reset” (in appellate counsel‘s phrase) brought about by Bruen‘s elimination of means-end scrutiny has no impact on these particular statutory provisions.
¶ 17 To be sure, respondent takes issue with our supreme court‘s view of the pertinent history. To this end, he argues that “the People” means “all Americans,” regardless of age; that minors, as young as 16, sometimes served in colonial militias; that there is no evidence of a tradition of
¶ 18 Under the binding precedents of Mosley, Jordan G., and Aguilar, respondent‘s facial and as-applied challenges to subsection (a)(3)(I) of the AUUW statute and subsection (a)(1) of the UPF statute all fail.
¶ 19 For these reasons, the judgment of the circuit court is affirmed.
¶ 20 Affirmed.