NRA wants 18 Year Olds to Buy Handguns

The NRA filed a petition for Writ of Certiorari with the Supreme Court on July 29 to rule on a lower court decision that the 1968 Gun Control Act's forbidding of anyone under 21 from buying a handgun from licenced dealers stands as Constitutional.   They would like to see it reversed and allow 18 year olds to buy handguns.  Their logic is that a person between 18 and 21 is being denied their "Second Amendment Rights" by this law.  What this shows to me is that the NRA is really nothing more than the shill of the gun industry.

1) Apparently being allowed to buy rifles and shotguns at 18 doesn't compute to "being allowed to exercise Second Amendment Rights."

2) Handguns are the #1 tool used in any form of criminal offending with a weapon, with well over 60% of *any* violent crime involving a weapon being a handgun.

3)  Young people have the highest level of criminal activity of any age group, with the 15-25 age group being the most criminal.  As an example, the homicide offending rate for 18-24 year olds in 2005 was about 27 offenders per 100,000.  Compare that to the next group, 25-34 year olds, which was 12 per 100,000.

4) Why is this?  I believe it's at least partly biological.  The frontal cortex of the brain, where decision making is done based on calculated rewards vs risks, is not completely formed til around age 25.  This is why teens and young adults tend to act more impulsively than say someone around the age of 30.  Socially they have not yet fully matured into the adult roles of family, career, and community that a person around 30 has attained.

Considering that teens and young adults are more impulsive than older folks, that this impulsiveness leads to more deviant and criminal behaviors, and that handguns are used in more crime than any other weapon, I think society is perfectly justified in making teens wait a few more years to buy a handgun.  As rifles and shotguns are used in a very low amount of crime (largely due to their lack of concealability), I believe those are proper firearms for younger people to purchase if they wish, and then if all goes well, to make a transition to a handgun a bit later.

Don't be fooled into thinking NRA is really concerned about "Second Amendment Rights" in this instance in any real sense.  Much like the liquor industry that is salivating in hopes the drinking age might be lowered back to 18, the NRA is just working to get three more years for people buying handguns and giving the industry more money.

http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/NRA-petition-13-137.pdf