A federal judge in Boston has upheld the Massachusetts law that keeps handguns and semiautomatic firearms out of the hands of 18-to-20-year-olds, handing the state a win in one of the most closely watched Second Amendment cases pending in the First Circuit’s territory. On August 21, 2026, Senior U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole, Jr. granted summary judgment to the state defendants in Escher v. Noble, No. 1:25-cv-10389 (D. Mass.), and ordered judgment entered in their favor.
Summary
The case is a direct challenge to the age structure built into the Commonwealth’s firearms licensing system, as revised by the 2024 omnibus gun law, “An Act Modernizing Firearm Laws” (H.B. 4885, signed by Governor Healey on July 25, 2024). Under that scheme, residents aged 18 to 20 may obtain a Firearm Identification card under G.L. c. 140, § 129B, which covers non-semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. They cannot obtain a License to Carry, which G.L. c. 140, § 131(d) reserves for applicants 21 and older. Because an FID card does not authorize handguns or semiautomatic firearms, the practical effect is that adults under 21 cannot lawfully purchase, possess, or carry either category, subject to narrow exceptions such as supervised use and military service under § 129C.
The plaintiffs filed suit on February 14, 2025. The lead plaintiff, Mack Escher, is a Brewster resident and Massachusetts Maritime Academy student, over 18 but under 21, who holds an FID card and uses it to possess a muzzleloading rifle and a shotgun. According to the complaint, he wants to buy a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic handgun for self-defense and a semiautomatic rifle chambered in 5.56mm for hunting and target shooting, and has refrained only because he fears prosecution. He was joined by seven of the country’s and the state’s most active gun rights organizations: Gun Owners’ Action League, Commonwealth Second Amendment, Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, the National Rifle Association of America, and Gun Owners of America. Cooper & Kirk of Washington, D.C., the firm behind many of the major post-Bruen age cases nationally, appeared with local counsel Jason Guida of Saugus.
On the other side of the caption are Colonel Geoffrey Noble, Superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police; Jamie Gagnon, Commissioner of the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services; and Chief Heath J. Eldredge of the Brewster Police Department, the licensing authority who would process Escher’s LTC application if the law allowed him to file one. Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell’s office defended the state officials.
The parties cross-moved for summary judgment in November 2025, finished briefing in January 2026, and argued the motions before Judge O’Toole on April 8, 2026. The August 21 docket entry disposes of all three motions: “the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment (dkt. no. 43) is DENIED. Noble’s motion for summary judgment (dkt. no. 39) is GRANTED. Gagnon’s motion for summary judgment (dkt. no. 39) is GRANTED. Eldredge’s motion for summary judgment (dkt. no. 53) is GRANTED. Judgment shall enter in favor of the defendants.”
One caution on sourcing. As of publication, the full text of Judge O’Toole’s opinion and order had not yet appeared on public court archives such as CourtListener’s RECAP collection, so the disposition above comes from the docket itself, and the description of the competing arguments below comes from the parties’ summary judgment briefs, which are public. Press accounts of the decision, including Bloomberg Law’s, reported that the court found the age restriction consistent with historical tradition, including the common law rules governing minors. We will update this piece with quoted language from the opinion once the document is publicly available.
Analysis
Start with the test everyone now has to apply. Under New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), a court first asks whether the Second Amendment’s plain text covers the regulated conduct. If it does, the law is presumptively unconstitutional, and the government must show the regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, using historical analogues that are “relevantly similar” in how and why they burdened the right. United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), softened the edges, confirming that the government needs a historical analogue, not a “historical twin.”
The plaintiffs’ best argument runs through the militia. Months after the Second Amendment was ratified, the Militia Act of 1792 enrolled every able-bodied male citizen “of the age of eighteen years” and required him to show up armed. Every state followed suit. On the plaintiffs’ account, that settles both Bruen questions at once: 18-year-olds were part of “the people” from the beginning, they were not merely permitted but required to keep and bear common firearms, and no Founding-era statute restricted their ability to buy or carry guns. Handguns and semiautomatics are the most commonly owned arms in America, so a flat prohibition on this age group owning them, the argument goes, has no historical pedigree at all. The briefs lean on the three appellate decisions that have gone the plaintiffs’ way: Worth v. Jacobson, 108 F.4th 677 (8th Cir. 2024), striking Minnesota’s 21+ carry permit age; Lara v. Commissioner Pennsylvania State Police, 125 F.4th 428 (3d Cir. 2025); and Reese v. ATF (5th Cir. 2025), which held the federal ban on dealer handgun sales to under-21 buyers unconstitutional.
The Commonwealth’s answer centers on a piece of law most people last saw in a first-year contracts class: the infancy doctrine. At the Founding, the age of majority was 21, and people below it could void their contracts. The state’s experts, including historian Saul Cornell, argued this made it practically impossible for anyone under 21 to buy a gun, since no merchant had an enforceable sale against a minor, and courts of the era held that pistols were not “necessaries” exempt from the rule. On this view, the reason there were no Founding-era statutes restricting gun sales to 18-to-20-year-olds is that none were needed. The state pressed a line from Justice Barrett’s Rahimi concurrence here: it is a mistake to assume Founding legislatures “maximally exercised their power to regulate,” so statutory silence proves little.
The state also had a second historical layer. Beginning with Alabama and Tennessee statutes in 1856 and accelerating after the Civil War, numerous states restricted sales of pistols and certain other weapons to persons under 21, laws that went essentially unchallenged and, in the one reported challenge, were upheld. The defendants argued the “why” behind those laws matches the “why” behind the modern statute: a judgment that people under 21 lack the maturity of older adults. The plaintiffs’ rejoinder was that most of those laws regulated sales, not possession, and that under Bruen the Founding era controls while later enactments cannot contradict it.
That is the whole fight, distilled. Which era counts, and what does silence prove? The militia laws and the infancy doctrine are both genuine history. They point in opposite directions, and Bruen gives trial judges no arithmetic for weighing one against the other. Judge O’Toole, a senior judge who has sat in Boston since 1995 and presided over the Tsarnaev trial, took a little over four months from argument to decision, and he sided with the reading that lets the licensing ages stand.
Nationally, the scoreboard is now a real circuit split. The Third, Fifth, and Eighth Circuits have ruled for young adults challenging age limits. The Eleventh Circuit, sitting en banc in NRA v. Bondi, 133 F.4th 1108 (11th Cir. 2025), upheld Florida’s 21+ purchase law, and the Fourth Circuit upheld the federal dealer-sale restriction in McCoy v. ATF, 140 F.4th 568 (4th Cir. 2025), both relying heavily on the same infancy doctrine reasoning Massachusetts advanced here. The First Circuit has not decided an age case post-Bruen, though its decision in Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island, 95 F.4th 38 (1st Cir. 2024), signals a court comfortable crediting 19th-century evidence where it does not contradict the Founding record. Both sides quoted Ocean State Tactical at each other in the briefs, which tells you something about how open that guidance is.
An appeal seems likely given who is on the plaintiffs’ side of the caption, though no notice had been docketed as of this writing. The plaintiffs have 30 days from entry of judgment under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a), which puts the deadline in late September 2026. A First Circuit ruling either way would deepen the split or extend it into a sixth circuit.
Then there is the Supreme Court. The NRA asked the justices to review the Eleventh Circuit’s Bondi decision in a petition docketed as NRA v. Glass, No. 24-1185. We have not independently confirmed the current status of that petition, so treat the possibility of a grant as exactly that, a possibility. What is confirmed is the depth of the disagreement the justices would be resolving: five circuits, two irreconcilable readings of the same historical record, and now a Massachusetts district court decision squarely aligned with the Bondi and McCoy camp.
For Massachusetts gun owners, nothing changes today. The licensing ages described in our Massachusetts gun laws guide remain in force: FID cards at 18 (or 15 to 17 with parental permission), Licenses to Carry at 21. Anyone under 21 remains limited to non-semiautomatic rifles and shotguns outside the supervised-use and official-duty exceptions.
The dates to watch: the appeal window closing in late September 2026, any First Circuit briefing schedule that follows, and the Supreme Court’s next moves on the pending age-restriction petitions, where a single grant would likely freeze every one of these cases in place until the justices rule.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can 18-to-20-year-olds legally own any firearms in Massachusetts?
Yes. Residents 18 and older (and minors 15 to 17 with written parental permission) can apply for a Firearm Identification card under G.L. c. 140, § 129B, which allows purchase and possession of non-semiautomatic, non-large-capacity rifles and shotguns. Handguns and semiautomatic firearms require a License to Carry, which is limited to applicants 21 and older. Supervised use of other firearms for hunting or target shooting, and use in military or other official service, remain available under separate exceptions.
Did the Escher ruling change Massachusetts licensing law?
No. The court upheld the existing scheme and entered judgment for the state defendants, so the age requirements enacted in the 2024 law remain exactly as they were. Nothing about FID or LTC eligibility, the application process, or the covered firearm categories changed as a result of the decision.
What happens next in the case?
The plaintiffs can appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit within 30 days of the entry of judgment. If they do, the First Circuit would become the sixth federal appeals court to weigh in on age-based firearm restrictions since Bruen. Separately, petitions asking the Supreme Court to resolve the existing circuit split are in the pipeline, and a grant in any of them could pause or reshape this litigation.