Massachusetts High Court Upholds Under-21 Handgun Carry Ban, Affirming the Conviction of a 20-Year-Old Who Was Never Allowed to Apply

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

BOSTON, MA — Massachusetts’ law preventing people under 21 from obtaining a license to carry handguns or large capacity firearms is constitutional, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled Tuesday, affirming the conviction of Mikai Thomson for carrying a firearm without a license.

Thomson was a passenger in a car that ran a red light and was arrested in December 2021 after he fled police and discarded a semiautomatic handgun, as reported by CommonWealth Beacon. He was 20 years old and held no license to carry, and he was charged with and convicted of carrying a firearm without one.

Thomson never applied for a license. His lawyers argued that applying would have been futile, because the law made him ineligible in the first place, and that the age restriction reduced the Second Amendment to a “second-class right” by stripping adults under 21 of the ability to carry. The court upheld the law anyway, according to the report. Two justices dissented, arguing the matter should have gone back to a lower court for more detailed expert testimony and briefs.

Nobody should mistake Thomson for a model gun owner. Running from police and throwing away a handgun is not conduct I will defend, and it is not how a responsible armed citizen behaves. But the question the court answered was not whether he behaved well. It was whether Massachusetts can bar an entire class of legal adults from ever holding a carry license, and that question lands exactly the same way for the 20-year-old who has never had so much as a traffic ticket.

The futility point is not a lawyer’s technicality. Under Massachusetts licensing law, an adult has to hold one of two credentials to buy or possess a firearm, a firearm identification card or a license to carry. Only the identification card is available to residents who are 18 to 20 years old, and the Second Amendment Foundation notes that even that card covers only rifles and shotguns that are not large capacity or semi-automatic. There is no handgun license a 20-year-old in that state can apply for and be granted.

The same restriction is already under attack in federal court. On February 14, 2025, Gun Owners of America, the Firearms Policy Coalition, the National Rifle Association, the Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners’ Action League, and Commonwealth Second Amendment, joined by plaintiff Mack Escher, filed Escher v. Noble in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The suit challenges H.B. 4885, which GOA describes as a complete ban on 18 to 20-year-olds acquiring, possessing, or carrying semiautomatic firearms and handguns, and argues the law violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. GOA says the ban has no historical precedent and that 18-year-olds were historically required to keep and bear the same common firearms older citizens owned. The plaintiffs are seeking a declaration that the law is unconstitutional, a permanent injunction against its enforcement, and attorney’s fees.

“The government has no right to pick and choose which Americans can exercise their Second Amendment rights,” GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt said in the organization’s announcement. “If an 18-year-old can serve in the military, vote, and enter contracts, they absolutely have the right to defend themselves.”

SAF announced on November 20, 2025 that the plaintiffs had filed a motion for summary judgment in that case. “Denying adults under 21 years old the ability to possess a handgun, the quintessential firearm of choice for self-defense, is a clear violation of their Second Amendment rights,” SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said. SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb framed it in terms of what the state already asks of that age group, pointing out that 18-year-olds serve in the military, marry, start businesses, serve on juries, and are tried as adults.

More from USA Carry:

• October 7 Is the Date: Massachusetts’ Highest Court Will Hear the Holyoke Man Denied a Carry License Over Decade-Old Charges That Never Led to a Conviction
• Charges From Over a Decade Ago, Never Convicted, Still Denied: SAF Takes a Police Chief’s Carry Denial to Massachusetts’ Highest Court
• Denied Over the State on His Driver’s License: NRA Sues Denver, Says Visitors Have No Legal Way to Carry a Gun There
• Valid D.C. Permit, Two Maryland Convictions Anyway: Eight 2A Groups Urging Maryland’s Highest Court to Hear Duvall Carry Case
• Two Lower Courts Struck Hawaii’s Handgun Purchase Deadline and Police Inspection Rule. The Full Ninth Circuit Just Put Them Back.

Two courts are now looking at the same age line from opposite directions. The state’s highest court has signed off on it. A federal district court has a summary judgment motion in front of it asking whether it can stand at all. What the Thomson decision means in the meantime is concrete: a 20-year-old in Massachusetts who wants to carry a handgun for self-defense has no application to fill out, no fee to pay, and no office to walk into. The only lawful answer available to him is to wait until he turns 21.

I will continue tracking Escher v. Noble as it moves through the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Read the original story: Massachusetts High Court Upholds Under-21 Handgun Carry Ban, Affirming the Conviction of a 20-Year-Old Who Was Never Allowed to Apply