Hi, I'm firearms attorney Gilbert Ambler, and I'm back today to talk about children and firearms, especially as we approach back to school time. What happens if your kids have Zoom classes and have firearms present in the Zoom classes? Or what happens if, God forbid, your children show up at school and boast to their friends about having access to firearms? We're going to talk about these situations today, but before we dive into it, if you have not yet hit that subscribe button, what are you waiting for? Hit that subscribe button, like comment with your thoughts, share with your friends who are approaching 10,000 views. You can help push us over that threshold. Help get us there. Alright, today we want to talk about children and firearms, and there's a common sense threshold here. Common sense is going to dictate for each individual parent, at which point it makes sense to trust their children around firearms.
I'm not going to advise you on the common sense part of that. That's up to each and every one of you. You know your own children. I want to talk about the law. What does the law say with respect to firearms and children? We're going to start with federal law and then we're going to talk about the law in a couple of states that I'm familiar with, Pennsylvania and Virginia. So under federal law from a broad spectrum, there is no prohibition on juveniles. And when I say juveniles in this video, I mean people under the age of 18, no broad prohibition on them possessing long guns, rifles, or shotguns. It's with handguns that we have to worry. Now, most of you know that gun stores FFLs cannot sell somebody under the age of 21 a handgun or ammunition for a handgun. But in fact, for those under the age of 18, it is generally unlawful to allow them access to a handgun under federal law.
Now, there are some very specific exceptions. There are exceptions for things like farming and ranching activities. If you've got a note from the parents giving you authority, giving the juvenile authority to have the handgun. So if you live on a farm and you've got a 16-year-old son who wants to carry a handgun to shoot snakes while he's out farming, that's something you could provide a note and authorize him to carry the handgun. So there are some very specific exceptions there. There's also exceptions for hunting and target shooting activity, et cetera. But these are very narrow exceptions. I want you to keep in mind. General rule. General principle is no handguns for somebody under the age of 18. That's a federal law. Then you've got to worry about state restrictions because various states might have various restrictions, for example. And actually before we dive into state restrictions, I do want to mention one other very important exception under federal law, which is there's a specific exception for a juvenile that possesses a handgun in defense of himself or others.
And so what does that tell us? It tells us that federal law explicitly recognizes that juveniles might have some access to firearms inside the home. They might be able to actually obtain them even if they're not regularly in possession of them, because otherwise that particular exception makes no sense if they would never have the ability to even say access the gun safe where the handguns are stored. So keep that in mind. There's also an exception for that. Next, let's talk about state law because each of you need to worry about the laws in your respective states. For example, Pennsylvania law generally restricts firearms, which they go on to define primarily to mean handguns. The definition of a firearm in Pennsylvania in most situations excludes long guns and it certainly does for 61 10, which is the prohibition on firearms to juveniles. So you've got a Pennsylvania based restriction that generally prohibits outside of against some very narrow exceptions, such as supervised target or hunting activity, handguns to juveniles.
You've also got laws in Virginia that are going to restrict all firearms to certain individuals. For example, in Virginia, it's unlawful to recklessly leave access to a loaded unsecured firearm of any type long guns or handguns to a child under the age of 14. All of this brings us fast forwards to the situation where you've got a child going back to school and one of two things happens. Either one, they wind up in a Zoom class and somebody on zoom sees the firearm in the background with their video. They got a rifle hanging up on their wall or a handgun in their room and somebody sees that. What should you expect to happen? Well, not long ago, I saw that in York County, Pennsylvania, there was a 13-year-old who was playing with a toy pistol wall on Zoom at school. It was like a snow day in February, in the month of February, this 2024 case and police showed up, charged him with disorderly conduct.
Now, fortunately that charge was dismissed. I don't know the specifics of the case. I imagine it may have been dismissed in Pennsylvania for a couple of reasons. Number one, it was in fact a toy firearm, not a real firearm. So there was no general prohibition on children having toy firearms in Pennsylvania. Number two, it was inside of his house, and the disorderly conduct laws in Pennsylvania are targeted toward places that are open to the public. His home presumably not open to the public, even if it was visible on Zoom. And number three, they would've had to prove some level of recklessness or intent to cause a disturbance with the firearm. And I don't know that they would've been able to do that in that specific case. Again, I didn't handle that case. I don't know the specifics. Why are we talking about it? The fact the matter is police showed up at his house and they're probably able to get away with showing up at his house because if the firearm appeared to be real, they can probably articulate based on that support, probable cause to show up.
They could probably even get probable cause for a warrant if they needed one. As I understand it, they didn't obtain one in this situation, but they can probably articulate if the firearm that appeared on Zoom looked real and it was a handgun, they can probably articulate that violation of in Pennsylvania state law and arguably, the feds could articulate a violation of federal law to obtain a warrant. So what is my recommendation here? My recommendation is sanitize your children's rooms. You don't want people being able to see things that even appear to be firearms if they're going to be attending virtual school. Secondly, what about the situation where a child mentions to their friends that their parents allow them access to firearms? This is a situation where you might expect school officials to want to interrogate the children, and that will tell you there is a sort of idea out there that generally speaking, school officials cannot interrogate children without their parents present, and that is generally speaking inaccurate.
In fact, there are some states that have restrictions saying school officials or police need to get parents present before they talk to a child. Most states do not have that protection. So what should you do here? You should plan ahead and talk to your children that if the police or school officials ever want to talk to them, they still have constitutional rights. Even though they're students, they need to be asking for a lawyer and to speak to their parents. They can say, look, I don't want to be questioned until I have my parents present and until I have the opportunity to talk to a lawyer. So talk to your children ahead of time so that they understand their rights if they get confronted by adults who might be looking to find a way to charge them with a crime. If you enjoyed this content, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Until next time.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XuzGcKzXsg&list=WL&index=3&t=6s
Credit: Gilbert Ambler, Esq. The Commonwealth’s Gun Rights