Democrats spent eight years treating the Parkland shooting like a blank check for gun control.
A Florida appeals court just voided one of the biggest checks they wrote.
An 18-year-old caught carrying a concealed firearm just had his conviction thrown out – and the same logic is now aimed directly at Florida's gun purchase age law.
Democrats Built This Law on Grief and Got Away With It for Eight Years
The 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act was emotional legislation rushed through in three weeks.
Democrats and Republicans alike voted to strip 18-to-20-year-olds of Second Amendment rights they had held since the founding of this country.
The logic was simple: the Parkland killer was 19 when he bought that rifle, so lawmakers used his crime to strip every 18-year-old in Florida of carry rights they had never misused.
On Wednesday, the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeals called that what it is – unconstitutional.
The case started with Jaylen Eubanks.
https://twitter.com/USACarry/status/2067616354677424299?s=20
Officers found an unholstered firearm on his waist in 2024, arrested him, and charged him under the very age restriction the court just obliterated.
Eubanks challenged the charge, arguing Florida had no right to treat law-abiding adults like second-class citizens.
A trial court disagreed.
The Fourth District reversed – unanimously.
Judge Spencer Levine wrote that restricting 18-to-20-year-olds "from rights to self-defense would make the Second Amendment a 'second-class' right."
The Founders Said 18-Year-Olds Carry Guns. Democrats Forgot to Check.
The court applied the Bruen test – the Supreme Court's 2022 framework that requires gun laws to be consistent with America's historical tradition of firearm regulation.
Florida had no answer.
Florida went looking for a Founding-era law that did what theirs did – and came back empty.
Because the Founders did the opposite.
The Militia Act of 1792 required 18-year-olds to enroll in their state militias – and bring their own guns.
As Judge Levine wrote, "That young adults had to serve in the militia indicates that founding-era lawmakers believed those youth could, and indeed should, keep and bear arms."
Florida tried to argue that concerns about firearm misuse among younger adults justified the restriction.
The court rejected that too.
https://twitter.com/gunpolicy/status/2067324382431654268?s=20
The court made clear that 18-to-20-year-olds are not felons or the mentally ill – the only groups America has historically disarmed.
Law-abiding adults with clean records don't belong in that company.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier had already refused to defend this law earlier this year.
When the ruling came down Wednesday, he had no regrets.
"In another win for the unalienable rights of Floridians, the 4th DCA agreed with our position that Florida's law banning adults under 21 from conceal carrying a firearm is unconstitutional," Uthmeier posted on X.
His office will not seek further review and will immediately work to implement the court's order.
The Courts Just Finished What the Florida Senate Kept Refusing to Do
Here is what the gun control crowd will not tell you.
The same Florida Legislature that passed this emotional 2018 law has tried to repeal it almost every year since.
The Florida House passed a repeal bill this past session – 74 to 37.
The Senate killed it again.
And the dominos are falling faster than Democrats can track.
This is the second major gun restriction Florida courts have dismantled using the Bruen framework – the First District Court of Appeals struck down Florida's open carry ban just last September.
https://twitter.com/CiberCuba/status/2067393918182822260?s=20
That ruling is already the law of the state.
Attorney General Uthmeier told every prosecutor and sheriff in Florida not to arrest law-abiding citizens carrying openly.
Now concealed carry for 18-to-20-year-olds joins that list.
Think about what Democrats built the entire post-Parkland gun control movement on.
The argument was that 18-year-olds are too dangerous to exercise constitutional rights.
The same 18-year-olds who can enlist, deploy to combat zones, and handle weapons of war cannot be trusted to carry a pistol in their own neighborhood.
That argument was never about public safety.
It was about stripping rights from a class of citizens who could not fight back in court – until now.
Sources:
- Jasmine Baehr, "Florida court says 18-year-olds have same gun rights as other adults," Fox News, June 17, 2026.
- "Florida court strikes down adults under 21 concealed carry ban unconstitutional," CBS12, June 17, 2026.
- Alex Rivenbark, "The Second Amendment landscape," SCOTUSblog, February 9, 2026.
- Mark W. Smith, "The Third Rails of Second Amendment Jurisprudence," Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, December 20, 2025.
- "Still 21: Senate again blocks post-Parkland firearm age restriction repeal," Miami Times, March 16, 2026.
