Hawaii's age-21 gun law survives Second Amendment challenge

A federal judge found the state's restriction on people 18-20 owning guns and ammunition fits the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.

by Jeremy Yurow, Court House News, September 1, 2026

HONOLULU (CN) — Hawaii can keep 18-year-olds from buying guns, a federal judge ruled, siding with the state in a Second Amendment challenge to its law that requires gunowners to be 21.

U.S. District Judge Jill Otake found Hawaii’s restrictions fit within the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, denying the plaintiffs’ motion to declare the law unconstitutional and granting the state’s counter-motion for summary judgment on Monday.

Juda Roache, a Honolulu resident over 18 but under 21, filed the lawsuit along with two licensed Hawaii gun dealers barred from selling to customers his age.

Roache wanted to buy a firearm and accept one as a gift from his mother. Hawaii law requires a police permit to acquire a firearm, and the state only issues those permits to people 21 and older, with narrow exceptions for hunting, target shooting and short-term rifle loans.

Otake, a Donald Trump appointee, didn’t dispute that 18- to 20-year-olds count as part of “the people” the Second Amendment protects. But she found the decisive issue was whether Hawaii’s age restriction is consistent with the nation’s history of firearm regulation under the Supreme Court’s decision in New YorkState Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen.

“The court finds solid evidence in founding era common law that society restricted the practical ability of people under 21 from acquiring goods, including firearms, because of concerns about their judgment and maturity,” Otake wrote.

Old contract law was a significant factor in her ruling. Under a doctrine dating to the founding era, people under 21 could void contracts for goods beyond basic necessities, a category that, per an 1822 South Carolina ruling, excluded liquor and pistols alongside whips and fiddles.

Otake rejected the idea that 18-year-olds count as “full-fledged adults" today in a way that should change that analysis, noting states still restrict people that age from buying alcohol and tobacco.

“It would be anomalous to say that a state could not make that same determination now and regulate accordingly,” Otake wrote.

She also relied on a wave of state laws passed in the decades after the Civil War, as cheap, mass-produced handguns became widely available and concerns about gun violence and young people grew amid rapid urbanization.

An 1875 Indiana law cited in her opinion made it a crime to sell or give anyone under 21 a pistol, dirk, bowie knife or cartridges made for a pistol. Otake cited 15 states and other jurisdictions, including Maryland, Texas and Wyoming, that passed similar bans on selling or giving pistols to people under 21 by the late 1800s.

Those laws don’t need to be exact historical matches for Hawaii’s, Otake wrote, only similar in why they exist and how they work, the standard the U.S. Supreme Court set out in 2024’s United States v. Rahimifor applying the historical test the justices established two years earlier in Bruen.

“The court thus concludes that the founding era’s practical prohibition on acquisition, coupled with the 19th century’s explicit prohibitions, reveal a principle of restricting firearm acquisition for people under 21,” Otake wrote. “Hawaii’s current age restriction falls within that tradition.”

The ruling wasn’t a total loss for the plaintiffs. Otake rejected the state’s argument that 18- to 20-year-olds might not even count as part of the constitutional class of people the Second Amendment protects, a threshold question that could have ended the case immediately in Hawaii’s favor.

She also found old militia laws requiring parents to arm their draft-age sons cut both ways: They showed minors sometimes had access to guns, even as they revealed how difficult it was for minors to acquire firearms on their own.

The case is one of several pending nationally over age restrictions on gun purchases, an issue that has split federal appeals courts. The Fifth Circuit has struck down a similar federal law, while the Fourth, Eighth, 10th and 11th circuits have upheld comparable age restrictions, leaving a growing appellate divide over the constitutionality of such laws.

Representatives for Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez and Roache didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.