(Georgia Recorder) — The Georgia Supreme Court upheld a state law that bars most people between the ages 18 and 21 from carrying handguns in public without military training Wednesday.
The court unanimously backed a lower court in rejecting the challenge from Thomas Stephens, a 20-year-old Georgian seeking to end enforcement of the prohibition.
Georgians between 18 and 21 can carry long guns in public, and they can carry handguns at home, in their car or in their place of business and use them for hunting, fishing or sport shooting with the associated license. But only 18- to 20-year-olds who have received weapons training as part of military service are generally able to carry a handgun in public.
Stephens’ attorney John Monroe argued that the exception is arbitrary and other young adults may be as capable of safely carrying handguns as members of the military.
“When you look at the nature of the training that a young person in the military gets, which is, as we said in our briefs, geared toward rifles and using other small arms like hand grenades, that’s not very well-suited or significant when it comes to carrying handguns in public, as opposed to training that people might get outside of the military that’s geared exactly towards carrying handguns,” he said.
The state, represented by the Office of Attorney General Chris Carr, argued that the prohibition on handguns for young adults is authorized by the Georgia Constitution as a permissible exercise of police power.
The unanimous opinion authored by Justice Andrew A. Pinson rejects Stephens’ call to overturn state precedent in favor of tests created by federal courts, describing it as a request “to uncritically import federal standards to guide the application of a provision unique to Georgia’s Constitution—a practice we have regularly criticized and disapproved.”
The state Legislature has been at the center of a debate over firearm access in recent years, especially since last September’s shooting at Apalachee High School, in which four people died. Proposals designed to encourage safe firearm storage stalled during the 2025 legislative session.
