Why Age-Restricting Guns is a Bad Idea
Here’s why you should care about Florida’s ban on gun ownership for adults under 21.
In the immediate aftermath of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School this past February, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a law banning gun ownership for Florida adults between the ages of 18 and 21. As with any law passed in a knee-jerk reaction to a horrible tragedy, this ill-considered law isn’t going to help crime rates or prevent any future tragedies. What it will do is further the current trend to infantilize America’s young adults. Here’s why you should care—even if, like me, you won’t see 21 again unless you get a lucky blackjack dealer.
18-Year-Olds Are Adults
As a society, we’ve had to draw a “bright line” between adulthood and childhood, despite the well-understood reality that maturity exists on a spectrum…and we have (up until now) put that line at age 18. Part of the reason why is that 18 is the age at which it’s possible we might require that person to fight—and potentially die—to defend our country. If we can legally force an 18-year-old adult to take up arms on pain of incarceration (which is what Selective Service is), how can we legally force that same adult not to? How is it all right to tell someone who can vote, commit to a legal contract, and consent to the disposition of their bodies that they still don’t qualify for protection under the Constitution they may be made to defend?
This is Not “Minority Report”
Here’s the point at which we must acknowledge that the Supreme Court has ruled that there are some circumstances in which public safety does trump individual rights. (The classic example is that the First Amendment does not protect your right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater.) And it’s pretty easy to demonstrate that the youngest adults tend to be the ones committing the bulk of violence in America. But let’s take another look at those crime statistics from the DOJ…what else do you notice? About 90 percent of that violence is from men. Does that mean that 50 percent of the population should have their freedom restricted for the crime of being born male? Of course not—this isn’t a dystopian future in which we punish our citizens based on what they might do. (Yet.)
It Won’t Help At All (and Might Make It Worse)
Making it illegal to own a gun until the age of 21 isn’t going to make a difference when it comes to preventing future tragedies. First, murder is already illegal, but that doesn’t seem to have entered into the calculus employed by any of the oxygen-thieves who’ve been committing mass murders up until now. But there’s more to it than that, and nobody really wants to talk about it, but the fact remains: The worst mass murders in American history were not committed with guns. They were committed with bombs…and that has been the case for a century. Part of the reason nobody wants to talk about that is that it sounds as if you’re suggesting that a school shooting is somehow better than a school bombing; part of the reason why nobody wants to talk about it is that we don’t want to give the oxygen-thieves ideas. But the fact remains that when some oxygen thief decides that they’d like to make their skidmark on the Jockey shorts of society, whether or not they can get their booger-hooks on a firearm isn’t going to make much difference.
What good will a law like Florida’s do? Well, it will certainly reinforce the societal narrative—which has been spreading since the mid-80s or so—that childhood extends into one’s mid-twenties and beyond. That it’s acceptable to limit an individual’s freedoms just because someone who looks like him committed a crime. That what you are matters more than who you are. And that’s a very dangerous precedent to set.
When I was growing up in South Texas between 1945 and 1966 I could not buy beer, liquor or guns. My father bought me a 22S/L/LR bolt action and I enjoyed shooting it when I could….but some of my buddies had 30-30s and 30-06 rifles and went hunting….Did not miss anything but shooting…I joined the USMC and went to RVN twice….
Without my previous experience with small arms I do not think it would of been possible for myself and others to join the military.
Just as our forefathers ahead of us learned how to shoot and joined the military to become a strong nation….how can we let our kids (young adults) not have the same experience that we had? THE TRILL OF FIRING A GUN.
In two weeks, I am going to be 68. The first gun I “owned” came from my father when he passed when I was 9. My mom brought me a .22 when I was 16 and I started on my collection when I got a job after college. I would probably be considered a “person of interest” to the Socialists of the far east and far west (funny how the crazies seem to gravitate as far from the Heartland as they can get” and the only reason I can think of the governor of Florida to sign such a bill is to appease the “snowbirds” who roost there from New York, New Jersey and New Russia (Massachusetts)(I had to look up the spelling as I have a mental block on anything coming out of that crackpot collection of crazies).
But, back to my point. I, with a “massive” number of firearms and a “massive” amount of ammunition have never once tried to or harmed unintentionally anyone.!
Age restrictions are STUPID.
Firearm type restrictions are STUPID.
Magazine restrictions are… what else?
When the liberal media and the liberal agenda come up with a way to quantify or qualify INTENT, I may listen. Until then, I think that “A well regulated militia (look up the definition in the Militia Act of 1810) being necessary to the security of a FREE STATE, the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear Arms SHALL NOT be infringed” kinda says it all.
I turn 72 next month, and view with some consternation how the gun laws of my youth morphed into those of today. On several occasions I rode the school bus with rifles, and it was no big deal. I also regularly attended meetings of a military collector’s club held in various local motel meeting rooms, churches, as well as a USO, with firearms in abundance at all. On Saturday mornings, from the 9th to the 12th grade, my friends and I walked through a military installation, rifles fully displayed, to attend the local junior rifle club. I also mail ordered (for the princely sum of $99), a German K-43, which was delivered by the Post Office to my home. The really unbelievable part of all this is that I did so in what is now the People’s Republic of New Jersey! How times have changed! If I were silly enough to still be a resident of that horrid place, today I’d end up facing a SWAT team for attempting any of these actions!
I am 67 years old and can remember growing up and sleeping over with a friend of mine with plans to go hunting after school. So I grabbed my 22 and rode the school bus, propped my gun up behind the teachers desk, retrieved it when the school day was over and rode a different bus to John’s house. That was second, thru sixth grade, but living on a farm you learn how to use and respect tools at an early age.
I’m 67. When I was 13 I could ride my bike 3 miles to the gun shop, with a 22 rifle in the basket, to the nearest gun shop/range, buy a couple boxes of 22LR and shoot. No problem at all. High School had a rifle club and we shot DCM 22’s in the basement range. Of course this wasn’t the East Coast it was Illinois in the suburbs of Chicago, which has changed a lot since then.
I was unaware Florida had passed such a law.
I’d imagine it would be immediately be hung
up high to air out and dry in the courts with any number of injunctions.
Further, every Floridian firearm owner less than 21 years old, becomes a criminal through no fault of their own. Unless, of course, they are “grandfathered” for any firearms they already own. Another reason why this is a very bad law, conceived on raw, liberal emotion and nothing else.
Private property may not be deprived from a person without renumeration. And who decides what amount of renumeration is acceptable?
There are any number of reasons why jumping to such awful and unconstitutional
fascist power grabs.
The words “Shall NOT be infringed” come to mind when considering whether such a bad law is even Constitutionally allowed. Nowhere is there an 18-21 restriction remotely Constitutional. The Constitution still remains as the law of the land, despite its darn hinderences for Socialist Democrats who have been chewing through their leashes for any way to squash the Second Amendment. When none exists, they simply ignore it.
At 65 years old it seems to me that when I was under the age of 21 we couldn’t walk into a gun shop, let alone buy a gun. I don’t know for sure but buying a gun without my Dad with never occured to me. Of course, back then it wasn’t like it is now as far as violence goes. Usually desputes were settled with fists instead of guns. As a life NRA member and a life time proponent of the Second Amendment I wasn’t aware that those under the age of 21 could even legally buy a gun today. And to be honest I don’t think teenagers today are mature enough to own guns. Has everyone forgotten that 18 to 21 year olds are from the millennial generation?
If you were under 18, you had to have your parent buy that shiny rifle of shotgun for you. At 18, you could but it yourself. You had to wait until 21 to buy a hand gun.
What’s with the line of ads for facebook, twitter Ad nauseam down the left side of the screen? They block the first and sometimes second words of comment sentences making it hard to comprehend what the writer is saying.
Good question! They are not ads, but links to share the article on social media. If you scroll to the bottom of that pop-out section, you will see two arrows like this – << - and if you click on those arrows that menu should disappear.