Washington DC – -(Ammoland.com)- The NRA is asking the Supreme Court to strike down regulations that limit handgun purchases to persons 21 years old and up.
This appeal to the nation’s highest court comes after the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declined to strike down the regulations.
The NRA has seized on the fact that while the “decades-old regulations” prohibit anyone under 21 from purchasing a handgun, a person can legally possess that firearm at age 18.
In other words, federal law requires a person to be at least 21 to purchase a handgun but once the gun is purchased another person only has to be 18 to legally possess and shoot it.
As The Hill reports, “Parents or guardians can give their 18 to 20-year old [sons and daughters] handguns as a gift.” Many parents do this very thing for their 18 to 20-year-old daughters after they watch them pack their car and prepare to drive hundreds of miles away to college.
The NRA wants coherence in the law. Therefore they argue that if 18 is old enough to posses and shoot a handgun, 18 should be old enough to purchase a handgun as well.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.
About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.
His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.
If you have questions or comments, email him at [email protected]. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.
@Mike: You’re missing that we have been losing this fight slowly to ‘common sense’ laws since before pretty much everyone reading this was born. Even before the 1934 Gun Control act they had been slowly passing laws to restrict your ‘shall not be infringed’. The hypocrisy of U.S. laws when it comes to adulthood for the 18-21 especially is ridiculous. I always laugh how they even take it farther when they think a crime a 13 year old committed was especially bad, and so charge him ‘as an adult’.
I don’t recall the 2nd amendment having an age limit? What am I missing?
Yeah I don’t get that either. Either your an adult or not. I don’t like this wishy washy your an adult if we feel like giving you your rights and your a child if we don’t. We will try you as an adult if we feel like it or maybe we won’t. The law should be cut and dried.
18 you can vote , get drafted [ well today they don’t draft them any more ,Now days they get them by telling them they can birng ther lover ] Buy a long gun , Get sent to the big boy jail , Get credit, and even get a job as a cop , however They can’t buy a pistol or a bottle of wiskey , dam only in America
I feel that any law abiding US citizen that passes the requirements for purchase and possession of a pistol or revolver in their respective state should have that right at the age of 18. My son went into the Marine Corps a month after his 18th birthday. He served in Desert Storm and many other areas in his 6 year term of duty. You can’t tell me he shouldn’t have been able to buy or own a pistol! If you are old enough to put your life on the line for your country, and are legally an adult (18), all… Read more »