WASHINGTON, D.C.—Washington’s 21-and-over rules for buying a handgun are still the law that matters in this state, even after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a legal opinion on Friday that a related federal ban cannot be criminally enforced.
The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that federal statutes barring licensed dealers from selling handguns or handgun ammunition to people ages 18 to 20 violate the Second Amendment. The opinion says the DOJ will not pursue criminal penalties against dealers who sell those guns to otherwise law-abiding young adults. The DOJ memo binds federal prosecutors, not state legislatures or state courts to their opinion.
Washington state law already goes further than the federal rule the memo addresses. Under RCW 9.41.240, adopted through Initiative 1639 in 2018, a person under 21 may not purchase a pistol. The same statute generally bars the purchase or transfer of a “semiautomatic assault rifle,” a label that covers nearly all semiautomatic rifles, not only military-style models. People 18 to 20 may possess a pistol only at home, at a fixed place of business, or on real property under their control, with a short list of other exceptions. A concealed pistol license requires the applicant to be 21. Most transfers, including most private sales, must run through a licensed dealer and a background check. Family gifts can skip the dealer, but they do not erase the age bans.
Therefore, a dealer in Spokane or Tacoma who sold a 9mm pistol to a 19-year-old this weekend would no longer face a threatened federal felony solely for that sale. The dealer, however, would still face prosecution under Washington law. State and local prosecutors can enforce RCW 9.41.240 whether or not the DOJ likes the federal analogue.
What an 18-year-old can still buy in Washington state has not changed. Manually operated rifles and many shotguns remain available at 18. Semiautomatic rifles and pistols do not. Open carry of a handgun without a license is generally reserved for those 21 and older who can legally possess firearms. Those limits sit on top of waiting periods, universal background checks, and other state rules that the federal opinion does not touch.
Gun-rights groups have argued for years that 18- to 20-year-olds are part of “the people” protected by the Second Amendment, that handguns are arms in common use for self-defense, and that Founding-era militia laws required 18-year-olds to furnish their own arms. The DOJ’s opinion adopts that reading for federal enforcement and cites District of Columbia v. Heller, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, and the Supreme Court’s 2026 decision in Wolford v. Lopez.
Challengers to Washington’s age limits could treat the DOJ’s memo as useful ammunition in their fight.
The live Washington case against I-1639 is Mitchell v. Atkins, filed in the Western District of Washington by Daniel Mitchell, National Rifle Association, and the Second Amendment Foundation. They sued officials including Chuck Atkins over the initiative’s age restrictions on semiautomatic rifles and related provisions.
Judge Ronald Leighton upheld the initiative in 2020. After Bruen, the Ninth Circuit vacated that judgment in December 2022 and sent the case back. That remand is the main federal vehicle for testing whether Washington’s 21-and-over purchase rules survive a history-and-tradition analysis.
Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation has long said the age line treats lawful adults as second-class rights holders. State defenders have pointed to public-safety data on young-adult shooters and to the fact that voters approved I-1639.
Circuit courts across the country are split on this issue. The Fifth Circuit struck down the federal handgun-sale ban in 2025, whereas the Fourth Circuit upheld it the same year. The Supreme Court declined several age-restriction petitions in 2025 and 2026, leaving the conflict in place.
Washington sits in the Ninth Circuit, which in 2022 blocked California’s near-total ban on semiautomatic-rifle sales to 18- to 20-year-olds in Jones v. Bonta, a pre-Bruen ruling that still colors the region’s law. Washington’s Supreme Court has recently upheld other gun regulations, including a large-capacity magazine limit and a temporary firearms ban after repeat drunken-driving convictions. Those cases do not decide the age question, but they show Olympia’s high court has not read Bruen as a command to unwind the state’s firearms code.
Author: Mario Lotmore
