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A U.S. appeals court on Thursday ruled against a federal law requiring young adults to be 21 to buy handguns, finding it violated the Second Amendment. The ruling, handed down by a panel of three judges on the conservative U.S. 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, comes amid major shifts in the national firearm legal landscape following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that expanded gun rights in 2022. The court found that people aged 18-to-20 should not be prohibited from buying guns. (Cline and Whitehurst, 1/30)

For decades, researchers, physicians, and epidemiologists were stymied in their efforts to study gun violence as a public health issue, a link that was first made in the late 1970s. The CDC began funding gun violence research in the 1990s, as the rates of firearm homicide and suicide spiked, but lobbying by the National Rifle Association led to the 1996 Dickey Amendment, which effectively halted federal dollars for the research. It wasn’t until 2019 that Congress struck a bipartisan deal jointly awarding the NIH and CDC an annual $25 million to study gun violence. (Magee, 1/30)

Baltimore is cautiously celebrating a sharp downward trend of ghost guns and what could be a harbinger of progress in the fight against gun violence across the country. (Dwyer and See, 1/30)

Students gathered to protest at Antioch High School less than one week after a deadly shooting on campus. Just before the school reopened Tuesday, students lined up along Hobson Pike holding signs protesting gun violence. Signs reading, “Safety and peace should not be privileges” and “I want to attend graduation not funerals” were on display as students echoed chants of, “Kids over guns!” ... The protest follows a rally Monday at the Capitol, where dozens of students and people affected by gun violence gathered as lawmakers met for the first day of a special legislative session. (Jackson, 1/28)