When it comes to gun rights, we're pretty much the only nation that sort of acts like we respect them. Mexico claims to respect them, but look at the laws down that way and it's clear that they respect no such thing. Most other places don't even acknowledge them as actual rights.

If you value your ability to defend yourself, living in the US of A is the best place in the world in which to live.

But we're not perfect. Some (pretty much all) rules and regulations suck. Usually, though, ours are better than most other nations' rules.

Yet Argentina just made a move that we should have made decades ago.

The Government of Argentina has decided to lower the minimum age for the authorization to carry firearms to 18. The measure was adopted through Decree 1081/2024, published in the Official Gazette, which modifies Article 55 of the National Law on Weapons and Explosives 20.429: the latter set the minimum age for carrying firearms at 21.

Now, this isn't exactly perfect. The law requires a criminal background check and the absence of "psychological or physical abnormalities," which is less than ideal, but this is South America. They're as anti-gun as it gets down that way, so my guess is that this is one of those things that had to be done in order to actually avoid severe backlash.

Note that in most places in the US, you have to be 21 in order to carry a firearm at all, even in some constitutional carry states. We have people trying to ban 18-year-olds from being able to buy a gun at all. 

Yet Argentina--a country I've been following since Javier Milei was elected--managed to expand things so 18-year-olds can carry a gun.

Of course, it's still not perfect. Even skipping the "abnormalities" thing above, it's still just a move in the age to get authorization to carry a firearm. It's still not like people can just go out and buy a gun, then carry it around. That's not in the cards down that way. I think Milei might be down with that since he has very strong libertarian leanings in pretty much everything he says and does, so I suspect that if it were up to him, it would be guns for everyone.

Unfortunately, Argentina isn't ready to go down that particular road.

It's a shame, too, because while their inflation has dropped like a concrete block tossed off a pier, they don't seem quite ready to go as far down the pro-liberty path in other ways as many might hope.

Then again, Milei has an approval rating that has bounced up and down, but has always been higher than Joe Biden's, so he might just be biding his time.

Regardless, this is one of those things we should have already done long ago here in the United States. There's no excuse for the fact that law-abiding adults can't carry a firearm in too many places. There's even less excuse for the fact that so many people in this country want to reduce that still further and prohibit them from even buying one.