The perpetrators of the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, both passed background checks when they bought the rifles they used in those attacks. That's because neither had a disqualifying criminal or psychiatric record, which is typically true of mass shooters. Given those facts, it was puzzling that politicians responded to the massacres by demanding an expanded federal background-check requirement for gun buyers.
By contrast, proposals to raise the minimum purchase age for long guns at least have something to do with the Buffalo and Uvalde attacks, since both shooters were 18 years old. But it is hard to see how that policy can be reconciled with the Second Amendment unless you assume that 18-to-20-year-olds, unlike older adults, do not have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Two federal appeals courts recently rejected that proposition, citing a long tradition of gun ownership by young adults.
