Insurance companies don't refuse to sell insurance to younger people. I've had a driver's license since I was 14, and have been insured the whole time(35 now). They raise rates for younger drivers, but they do not outright refuse them, making the comparison to guns wholly irrelevant. If you are going to raise the min age of firearm ownership to 25, you might as well change the enlistment age to 25 as well....can't have any of those youngsters messing about with our military firepower, right? I'm sure the DoD would get behind that proposal! Here's an idea...rather than make assumptions about a person's level of responsibility, lets give them the benefit of the doubt. Lets let them own guns...and then, if they DO misuse them, punish them for that misuse (you know, like we do for other people....and how insurance companies ACTUALLY operate- dropping drivers that have been PROVEN to be high risk). Raising the age restriction paints with an awfully wide brush, and I'm not behind denying our younger soldiers the right to privately own weapons when their government says they are responsible enough to fight their wars for them. That is a double standard on a level of which I cannot accept.
Bear with me here.
1. Not everyone age 16 or even 18, or even 21 have access to a car. Cars and insurance are expensive for a teenager. You need a certain level of responsibility or privilege to have that access. When you were 14, I suppose your parents thought you were responsible enough to drive a car. (Or child labor laws were different back then, and you bought your own?) This is fine, because your parents know you a lot better than a guy behind a counter that will only check to see that you have an ID ,and that you are able to correctly check 15 boxes on a form.
2. I was shooting firearms when I was 14. Again, cuz my parents thought I was responsible enough to do so. Raising the legal age doesn't have to change much, if anything. See, you don't even need a license to shoot a firearm, at all.... So your driver's license at 14 means exactly squat. Did you own and have unsupervised access to a car at that age?
The difference here is that a lot of mentally instable teen/young adults who can't hold a steady job and keep good credit can't go out and buy a car without help. Therefore, for the most part, they can't do it behind their friends and families back without their consent or help. To be true, there's a lot of easily obtained credit floating around these days, but a vast majority of 18 yr olds in this country are financially dependent to some degree on their family, despite having their own job. And the car loan guys are going to ask a lot more questions and look into credit history and verify employment - some fairly reliable indicators of personal responsibility, or in the least, an ability to pay if something goes wrong. And they can't even legally drive the car off the lot until it's also registered and insured. But a lot of these people could go out and buy an inexpensive firearm with a ID, the ability to sign their own name, and the last $250.00 they have to their name.
lets give them the benefit of the doubt. Lets let them own guns...and then, if they DO misuse them, punish them for that misuse (you know, like we do for other people....and how insurance companies ACTUALLY operate- dropping drivers that have been PROVEN to be high risk).
By the time the government has recognized that a person is unfit to have access to a firearm, it's due to a willfully committed felony - or in some cases, an involuntary commitment to a mental instution (which is likely to happen after one's 18th birthday). Yeah, we punish felons, already. But might not parents be more likely to recognize a problem in time to prevent the odd tragedy?
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