IOPList.Org

Texas just made it easier for
young people to carry guns


The policy change follows a federal judge's August decision
declaring Texas' handgun age restriction unconstitutional.




A federal judge's recent decision prompted the policy change.
Cavan Images/Getty Images/Cavan Images RF



It just got even easier for young people to carry a gun in Texas. The Texas Department of Public Safety
will no longer enforce a state law prohibiting adults ages 18 to 20 from carrying handguns in public,
the Dallas Morning News' Allie Morris reported Friday.

DPS announced the policy change in a Jan. 10 memo sent to agency officers, Morris reported. The
decision comes after a federal judge declared a Texas state law preventing 18 to 20 year olds from
carrying handguns unconstitutional in August.   

The judge's court order technically applies only to Texas DPS officers and local law enforcement in
Fannin, Grayson and Parker Counties in North Texas. However, legal experts told the Dallas Morning News
that the order may influence how local cops in other counties across Texas enforce the age restriction law. 

“There’s only so much law enforcement that can be undertaken,” Seth Chandler, a professor of law at
University of Houston Law Center, told the Dallas Morning News. “Given a choice between a law that’s
clearly constitutional… and a law whose constitutionality is in doubt, they might choose to enforce the
one that is clearer,” Chandler added.

Fort Worth Federal District Judge Mark Pittman sided with a Nevada-based gun rights group that argued
that Texas' handgun age limits violated the second amendment in an August court order. “Based on
the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by Founding-Era history and tradition, the Court concludes
that the Second Amendment protects against this prohibition," Pittman said in the order.