ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court threw out a constitutional challenge to a state law blocking anyone under 21 from carrying handguns in public.
The ruling came as a 20-year-old man from Lumpkin County sued, having issued a constitutional challenge.
Thomas Stephens, of Lumpkin County, sued the State of Georgia in Superior Court after a probate court in the county denied him getting a weapons carry license.
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The Georgia Attorney General’s Office filed to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that the block on anyone younger than 21 having a handgun in public was “a permissible exercise of the police power” authorized by Georgia’s constitution.
The Georgia Supreme Court ruled unanimously to reject Stephens’ challenge.
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In the opinion, authored by Justice Andrew A. Pinson, the court said his “quite narrow” challenge did not argue that the statute violates the state constitution, as it has been applied by the Georgia Supreme Court for more than 100 years.
Additionally, the court said Stephens did not show a conflict between the prohibition statute and the Georgia Constitution, nor the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.
“Most problematic, Stephens does not even say how or why that construction is not consistent with the provision’s original public meaning—at least not with any detail or real authority in support—and he offers no serious alternative construction that would establish, what, in his view, the correct understanding of that original public meaning is,” Justice Pinson wrote. “Instead, he asks us to uncritically import federal standards to guide the application of a provision unique to Georgia’s Constitution—a practice we have regularly criticized and disapproved.”
According to the court, Georgia law allows anyone between 18 to 21 to have long guns, such as rifles, and carry them in public, as well as to have handguns and carry them on private property.
However, unless someone has received weapons training as part of military service, anyone under 21 cannot carry a handgun in public, the court wrote.
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