On Monday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Philip A. Brimmer issued a stay halting implementation of a new state law which raises the age to purchase firearms to 21 – violating the individual right to bear arms. This was the right call.

In a case brought by Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, the court’s decision granted a request from two Colorado residents between the ages of 18 and 21, Tate Mosgrove and Adrian S. Pineda, who will clearly be harmed if the law goes into effect.

Passed earlier this year, SB23-169 bans firearm sales and transfers to anyone under age 21, rather than 18 under previous state law. And as I pointed out in March, under the new statute – which is not currently in effect due to Judge Brimmer’s ruling – the exceptions are narrow.

Someone who is active-duty military or active-duty police can only purchase a firearm… while on active duty and related to their job. So, we can trust them with a firearm to serve their country or community, but not to protect their own family?

Likewise, a 20-year-old single woman living alone cannot purchase or possess a firearm for her own self-defense. So much for “women’s rights.”

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The law doesn’t forbid possession or use of firearms by someone under age 21, and they can still acquire, inherit or receive one as a gift from family members. But those opportunities are few and far between for most people.

Let’s be real: This law will only hamper law-abiding adults – and it is unquestionably unconstitutional.

“Imagine telling an 18-year-old man or woman that they’re too young to join a church, write for a newspaper, have a speedy trial or stop police from ransacking their home without a warrant,” said Max McGuire, author of The Conservative’s Guide to Winning Every Gun Control Argument. “If the Colorado Legislature had tried to rescind any other right like this, there would be riots in the street. Instead, they’re being applauded for eliminating young adults’ God-given natural right to self-defense.”

Just because this particular Constitutional protection deals with guns does not empower government to selectively disregard those Constitutional protections. Period.

The plaintiffs argue the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms necessarily implies the right to “acquire arms.” This makes intuitive sense: one cannot own a thing without first obtaining the thing. Thus, they argue it’s not necessary for a right to be totally prohibited for a group to show a right is infringed.

“The court agrees with the individual plaintiffs that the Second Amendment includes the right to acquire firearms and, therefore, protects the individual plaintiffs’ proposed conduct,” Brimmer wrote. This means the plaintiffs “have sufficiently demonstrated a likelihood of success in showing their proposed conduct is covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment.”

The ruling is on solid ground because it analyzes Colorado’s law using the tests set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court on how a gun control effort must pass  Constitutional muster. These tests – primarily laid out in the Supreme Court cases of District of Columbia v. Heller and New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen – center largely on an historical analysis of which weapons were permitted at the time of the Founding and what the Founders’ understanding was when the Second Amendment was ratified.

“The Supreme Court has been clear: For gun control to be constitutional, there had to have been similar restrictions/regulations in place at the time of the Founding or the ratification of the 14th amendment. There are no such historical analogs here,” explained McGuire. “The Colorado Legislature is flagrantly ignoring the Supreme Court’s recent rulings.”

The state attempted to defend the law by citing past examples of age restrictions in other states, all of which Brimmer rejects using the U.S. Supreme Court’s test.

In one instance, Colorado called upon an 1878 case in which the Tennessee Supreme Court endorsed a similar age restriction as “wise and salutary.” The example failed because it simply does not reflect what the thinking was regarding the right to keep and bear arms amid ratification.

“The test outlined by the Supreme Court is whether the country at the time of that ratification understood that the right to keep and bear arms shouldn’t apply to 18-year-olds,” McGuire explained. “Heller and Bruen concluded that the Second Amendment was being misinterpreted as a collective right, when it should have been recognized as an individual right. That 1878 Tennessee decision existed under an incorrect interpretation of the Second Amendment.”

Thus, the court found Colorado “fails to point to any evidence during the founding era that a total prohibition on the sale of firearms to minors was consistent with the right to bear arms.”

Let’s be clear: Colorado’s law barring adults under age 21 from purchasing firearms simply cannot be defended with any analogous example that will pass the Supreme Court’s tests – because one doesn’t exist.

This law amounts to an effective ban on firearms for almost every legal adult ages 18 to 20 by forbidding most of the ways they can legally acquire a gun. This affects single mothers, married men and active-duty military alike – depriving them of the ability to exercise their natural right to self-defense.

Judge Brimmer was right to put a stay on this unconstitutional law. Now it’s time to strike it down completely.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and host of “The Jimmy Sengenberger Show” Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on News/Talk 710 KNUS. Reach Jimmy online at JimmySengenberger.com or on Twitter @SengCenter.