The nation watched today as thousands of children marched on Washington to protest the Second Amendment. These children were mostly polite and eloquent in expressing their views that all guns should be banned. Since they are children, and since our schools have utterly failed to teach real history, very few understand why we have a Second Amendment. Here is a hint, it is not for hunting.
One of the appealing proposals they make, however, is raising the age to purchase a rifle to 21. The current age is 18, although one must be 21 to own a handgun. It occurred to me as I was watching these speeches that perhaps we really have reached a turning point in our nation. Our children do not mature nearly as soon as they did just two generations ago. Very few have a job, and most will live with their parents until they are 30. We do not encourage risk taking, and we reward only the most docile, compliant children in the class. Current high school students will not marry until they are 30 either, but they will almost all have had sex with multiple partners before they are 21.
Most boys between 18 and 21 in our nation are not physically fit for military service. Even fewer know how to hunt, handle a firearm, handle a knife, fix an engine, stop a fight, plow a field, dance with a lady, or keep their opinions to themselves in front of their bosses. It makes little sense that we would allow the vast majority of these boys to purchase an AR-15, so I will support the age increase.
However, it is unfair to ask these children to give up their Constitutional right to own a firearm, but then require them to register for the draft and, potentially, fight and die for their country. If they are not responsible enough to own a gun, then it is deranged to treat them as mentally and emotionally mature enough to fight a war. They simply are not emotionally or mentally developed enough to be either effective or able to understand the sacrifices they are being asked to make.
Likewise, teenage drivers kill far more children per year than firearms. If a budding adult is incapable of handling a 7.8 pound rifle responsibly, I cannot see how, as a society, we should allow them to handle a three ton vehicle. If we really want to curb teen deaths, we must raise the driving age to 21. I do not trust this generation with an 8800 pound truck any more than I do with an AR-15. They are distracted by social media, music and friends, and not emotionally mature enough to understand the responsibility that comes along with driving such a potentially deadly weapon.
Along those same lines, I cannot understand why we would allow the current generations of children to marry before their 21st birthday. It requires enormous emotional maturity to responsibly handle marriage and, more importantly, children. Couples married under 25 are twice as likely to divorce, leaving behind broken homes with broken children. By allowing children to marry children we perpetuate this cycle of broken homes that, in some cases, result in more school shootings, drug users, and teenage drunk driving accidents.
National wealth and abundance has created a society in which we infantilize our children well into their 20s. As a result, they really probably are not capable of owning a gun, driving a car, serving in the military, or getting married. They cannot form the capacity to contract, for example, for a student loan. Our current generations of children simply cannot be trusted to be emotionally mature until at least 30. It is our own fault as fawning parents, but that doesn't change the fact. As a result, I propose raising the age of majority to 21.
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