Well, they are old enough to tote fully automatic M4s around Iraq and Afghanistan, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to buy a pistol when they come home. Thank you South Carolina Supreme Court for correctly ruling that 18 year olds are adults.
7 thoughts on “Firearms Rights For Adults”
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Now if we can just get the Brady Bunch and the VPC to classify children as those 17 years old or younger.
According to the linked article adults still cannot *buy* handguns if they are under 21, but they can now *posses* them. The article indicated age limit for purchasing is a federal law.
I’ve been waiting for this information for a very long time. I thought it was just a rumor.
So now in SC a father could buy a pistol and let his 18-20 year old son or daughter carry it for protection in their vehicle (car carry is already legal without a permit in SC; I know because I had a potential job offer in that state circa 2007 and did some research). Sounds like a step forward. Permitting CCW for this age demographic should be the next step. These incremental steps could help push forward allowing concealed carry on college campuses, too, though I think that should happen sooner rather than later. Plenty of us state employees working at those universities feel pretty vulnerable not being allowed to carry @ work.
I’d personally like to see handgun purchase age limits lowered to 18 at the federal level, and penalties removed for states who lower the legal age for buying alcohol to 18 also (as it stands, any state that does this now loses out on federal highway funds and other goodies).
Georgia law allows those in the military to carry a firearm without the need of a carry license just like the police can (on or off duty).
Also note that Federal law also prohibits buying handgun ammo to those under 21 as well. So someone else will still have to buy the ammo for it.
Couple of things, from someone living in SC…
The 21 age restriction is a federal limitation on *dealers* selling handguns. If you’re 18 in SC you can buy one from a private individual, get one as a gift, etc and not have to worry about the age requirement.
It’s a goofy law about being 21 to buy handgun ammo. If you’re 18 you can easily buy everything to load your own. I also am pretty sure that if you can show that the ammo is for a rifle (good reason to get a pistol caliber carbine if you ask me) you can still buy it.
The state law was not created in response to anyone having a desire to let 18 year olds buy guns. The reality was that we have a big gun distributor or two in this state and they like to hire college kids. Problem is that it was determined that part of their job- taking handguns off the shelf and packing them up for shipment- actually consists of taking possession (in a legal sense) of the handguns, which was unlawful for someone under 21 to do.
So, in order to help the distributors hire lower waged college kids, they made it legal for 18 year olds to posses handguns.
If this wasn’t an issue, there wouldn’t have been a change. It had nothing to do with a desire to extend an adult right/privilege to those classified as adults for other purposes. That may have helped in getting everyone to go along with it, but it wasn’t the impetus for the action.