The law prohibiting handgun sales to adults under 21 was framed as a crime reduction strategy. Based on what I saw growing up, especially my formative years as a young adult in the 1990s, it didn't work. That doesn't even touch the constitutional arguments, which are profound. There's a reason the Department of Justice isn't standing with that particular bit of legislation.
Sure, the usual suspects don't like it, but they don't like that we have rights in the first place, so I'm not surprised.
And the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is, also unsurprisingly, all for it.
From a press release:
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says the Department of Justice’s analysis that the federal ban on handgun sales to young adults in the 19-20 age group is unconstitutional “is the correct position, and should have been announced long ago.”
The prohibition was part of the 1968 Gun Control Act.
The DOJ memorandum has ignited a fury among gun prohibition groups, which are typically declaring doom and gloom across the landscape. The head of one gun control lobbying organization “used a broad brush to demonize the entire age group” by asserting they are responsible for many school shootings, public mass shootings and gun-related homicides.
“Imagine the backlash if such insulting remarks were made about certain ethnic groups,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “These people are afraid to blame gangs for troubling statistics, so they blame guns.
“But the Justice Department properly recognizes that young adults are mature enough to be drafted, serve as jurors and be sentenced to capital punishment for crimes,” he noted. “We would also add that young adults can vote, run for local public office, get married, start businesses, enlist in the military—where the government issues them automatic weapons—and enter into contracts. We send them to foreign lands to defend our country, yet the law prohibits them from enjoying all of the rights guaranteed by our Constitution.
“Frankly,” Gottlieb continued, “we are impressed at the degree of thought that went into the DOJ memorandum. To boil it all down, the Justice Department—which has repeatedly stated the Second Amendment is not a second-class right—is also now saying that young adults are not second-class citizens, able to enjoy some rights but are effectively prevented from exercising one right which belongs to ‘the people.’
“We think the time has come for Congress to remedy this situation,” he said. “The Justice Department has just handed Capitol Hill a road map. We encourage Congress to right a wrong adopted nearly 60 years ago and restore all the rights which have been earned by young adults throughout the nation’s history.”
Calling this "the correct position" is absolutely accurate.
"But these kids can't drink or gamble!" some would say. To that I say, "You're right. Let's fix those while we're at it."
Gottlieb also nails it, you see, when he says, "Imagine the backlash if such insulting remarks were made about certain ethnic groups," because the rhetoric would have you believe not just that every adult under the age of 21 is a ticking time bomb, but that they magically wake up on their 21st birthday and are suddenly beyond all of that.
What's really telling is the "evidence" used: that the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until 25. That just means they want to bump the age further back when they get half a chance.
But this is the same age group that has been found on the battlefield of every single war the United States has fought. They earned our freedom with blood and the psychological scars of combat, and for someone to do a tour of duty in a warzone, where they were required to carry a firearm everywhere, to be told at home they're too young to buy a gun is ridiculous.
The DOJ took the correct position. There's no other way to look at it.
