In most states, owning a handgun before the age of 21 isn’t impossible, but since federal law makes it illegal for someone that age to buy one, it might as well be. Plus, if you do manage to own one, it’s not like you can lawfully carry it in most places. Concealed carry is also for those age 21 and up.

However, a Wisconsin bill seeks to actually change that.

After a historic year of homicides in the state of Wisconsin, state legislators are now proposing policies that are dangerous to youth, families, and our communities.

In 2019 alone, there was one firearm related death every 15 hours in the state of Wisconsin 一 amounting to more than 600 deaths. To make matters worse, violent crime continued to rise in 2021.  Both urban and rural communities have been impacted; 70% of the firearm-related deaths were caused by suicide.

Despite the violence, Republican lawmakers are circulating legislation that aims to lower the age to conceal and carry a firearm to 18 and allow firearms to be locked in vehicles on school grounds.

Researchers and violence prevention advocates believe this legislation threatens to exacerbate the already increasing rates of violence in the state.

“Researchers.”

Look, you can find researchers that will take just about any position you care to name. They have their researchers and we have ours. Plus, even I can debunk a lot of that “research.”

And “violence prevention advocates” is just another term for gun control activists. They’re not so much interested in preventing violence as preventing anyone from having a gun. Don’t think that’s fair? Where’s their activism against knives or hammers? More people are killed with bats every year than so-called assault weapons, yet which one are they trying to ban.

In other words, the people claiming this will make things worse are the same people who say every pro-gun law will make things worse, despite the drop in violent crime from the 1990s coinciding with an expansion in pro-gun legislation. If they were right, we’d see the opposite, but we don’t. Funny, that.

Should 18-year-olds be able to get concealed carry permits? Absolutely. If they’re old enough to enjoy the rest of their rights without restriction, they should be able to carry a firearm too.

If 18-year-olds are somehow too irresponsible to be trusted with a gun, then why are they trusted to vote? Hell, it wasn’t that long ago when Democrats were in a full-court press to lower the voting age to 16, but they don’t trust them with a gun.

Why?

The answer is that they believe these age groups are stupid enough to vote Democrat, which apparently means they’re too stupid to be trusted with a gun.

Sounds harsh? Maybe, but that doesn’t make it wrong, now does it? It’s the only conclusion I can get based on the available data.

Look, 18-year-olds are trusted with guns in warzones. They carry a firearm everywhere in those zones and they do so without incident. If it was purely a maturity issue or a factor of brain development, we’d have had a lot of problems over the 20 years we’ve spent at war.

Those problems simply don’t exist.

So yeah, I have no problems with Wisconsin potentially lowering the age for concealed carry. It would be better to just embrace constitutional carry for all adults, but I’ll take what I can get.