There are a lot of proposals being floated and upping the age of gun* ownership is one of them. I just commented on this a week ago. At stake (presently) is whether 18-year-olds should be able to purchase semi-automatic rifles. I recognize the science that suggests that the part of a teen’s brain that manages rational judgement is not fully developed until twenty-five years old. I also recognize that experiential observation shows many different outcomes in youth maturity. In prior recent history, rural adolescents routinely managed guns much earlier than 18 years old. All our modern wars have been fought to include placing automatic weapons in the hands of teens. Nevertheless, there’s a great deal of evidence to suggest that the maturity of even the average 18 years old is significantly diminished from what it was even recently. Given this spread of observation and setting aside constitutional law for a moment, do we want a federal law to regulate a full prohibition for those under 21?
Ann Coulter, famous fem conservative commentator, brought forth an intriguing possibility when she tweeted that she’d be in favor of raising the age to own a gun to 21 as long as they raise the age to vote to 21. This strikes me as an elegant solution not for what it reveals about 18-year-old’s but what it would highlight in the prohibitionists, prominently, liberal Democrats; because they crave young votes. But if late teen’s brains are not developed enough to have good judgement about firearms, why should they be entrusted with judgement about whom to elect? We all know which way that Faustian choice would fall.
I’ve had a notion to eventually write about the visible and precipitous decline in readiness for adulthood among the young, but I have to admit my vantage is small and that far greater numbers of them could be perfectly, functionally ready. It’s high school graduation season and some will be leaving home and signing up for military service where a gun will be placed in their hands within a few short months. Many more will leave home and head to college. Some will go right into regular employment, apprenticeships, even marriages and chld-rearing and will be setting up independent homesteads. Of course, that’s far rarer than it used to be but it’s still possible in the context of a supportive community and family. Who are we to say that those young adults cannot own a gun for protection? Good homes, good parents, good communities, most always make for mature self-sustaining young adults at an early age. If we’re going to lament the great decline in life readiness among the young, shouldn’t we really be looking at from whence they came?
For the liberal Democrat, and frankly, all corporate politicians, the real question isn’t about whether an 18-year-old can handle a gun; they have no interest in the minutia of a teen’s mental capacity, only in striping that right so that they can proceed to the next step toward full prohibition, a disarmed populace. Personally, there are some young adults I see that should not own arms. The only reasonable way to regulate that is at the local level. Liberal democrats don’t want that any more than they would want to strip away votes at the same time as delayed firearm ownership. Power and control must reside in Washington in their view. If we want to get serious about mass casualty events, all of them, we’ll get serious about mental health intervention and about the effective preventive vigilance of law enforcement including the FBI. These two deficiencies define virtually every mass shooting.
Note: *In the context of various state laws, applicable to whichever firearms are permissible in that jurisdiction