The National Rifle Association (NRA) filed an appeal on Wednesday after a judge upheld a Florida law that stopped people younger than 21 from purchasing guns, according to The Sun Sentinel.
The NRA appealed a Wednesday decision that upheld former Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s 2018 bill that put restrictions on gun purchases, according to the Sentinel. The NRA is trying to “protect the constitutionally guaranteed rights of all law-abiding adults,” said Marion Hammer, the NRA’s Florida lobbyist and former president.
One of the measures in Scott’s bill stopped anyone under 21 from buying a firearm but he said there are “exceptions for active duty and reserve military and spouses, National Guard members and law enforcement.”
The NRA filed a lawsuit in March 2018, asking a federal judge to stop Scott’s law from going into effect, and criticized the former governor for punishing “law-abiding gun owners for the criminal acts of a deranged individual.”
The booth of the National Rifle Association of America is seen at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center February 26, 2020 in National Harbor, Maryland. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker upheld the law Tuesday by saying it followed legal precedent, according to the Sentinel. He also said the case fell “squarely in the middle of a constitutional no man’s land.”
“There is no question that 18-to-21-year-olds are adults in the eyes of the law and the Constitution,” Hammer told the Sentinel.
“To deny those younger adults their rights because of the actions of criminals is nothing less than political discrimination and it is inconsistent with the Heller decision by the U.S. Supreme Court,” she told the Sentinel. “The district court agreed this was unfair but ruled his hands were tied by Eleventh Circuit precedent.”
The NRA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation. (RELATED: NRA Statement On Gun Control Bills H.R. 8 And H.R. 1446)
Gov. Ron DeSantis in May signed a bill that banned local governments from imposing gun restrictions. The law allows lawsuits for “unwritten” policies, and forces local governments to pay damages and attorney fees even if they alter their policies after the cases are filed.
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