WTR wrote:mrvmax wrote:WTR wrote:My wife is Conservative and very pro 2A. She has been shooting since age 7, has her own pistol, supports all my firearm related activities and purchases. However, she has also has taught Neuro Anatomy, Neuro Physiology and Neuro Pharmacology at a graduate class level. She says the brain at 18 is not fully developed and has issues with decision making and impulse control to name a couple (especially males). She would like to see the minimum age to purchase a firearm be 25. Although, she would compromise to 21. I think the insurance companies have figured it out as rates greatly decrease at 25.
I have read and heard similar info before. To be fair, if we did that then the minimum age for entry to the military would need to be raised too along with the age to purchase cigarettes and alcohol. We would also need to raise the age for getting a drivers license and to vote to 21. It needs to be done across the board or not done at all, it’s not logical to pick and choose, if they aren’t fully developed for one thing then they aren’t for anything.
Exactly, and here CNN is kicking around whether or not we ought to extend the vote to 16 year olds. The vote is an awesome responsibility, and we’ve already seen, time and time again, how that responsibility gets handled by people OVER 21 who vote without any clue at all of the greater ramifications of their vote. But CNN thinks that giving that awesome responsibility to 16 year olds is a good idea? If so, then let us lower the age to purchase an AR15 to 16 years old too.
WTR, with all due respect to your wife (I am sure that she is right about the brain’s development), I would be genuinely interested to know what is her answer to people OVER 21 who abuse their 2nd Amendment rights?
- Syed Rizwan Farook was 28 and his wife Tashfeen was 29 when they shot up the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, killing 14 others and wounding 22.....with two AR15s and a Springfield 9mm XD pistol.
- Stephen Paddock was 64 the night he shot up Las Vegas with a gozillion ARs.
- Omar Mateen was 29 the night he shot up the nightclub in Orlando with a sort of AR derivative.
- Cho Seung-hui was 23 when he shot up the VA Tech campus....admittedly with semiauto pistols with 10-round magazines.
- Devin Patrick Kelley was 26 when he shot up the Sutherland Springs church with an AR15.
- James Holmes was 25 when he shot up the Aurora movie theater with an AR15, a shotgun, and a Glock pistol.
- George Banks was 40 when he shot 13 people to death in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania with a Colt AR15.
- Michael McClendon was 28 when he shot and killed 10 people in Geneva County, Alabama, with an AR15, an SKS, and a handgun.
- James Edward "Pop" Pough was 42 when he shot and killed 9 people and wounded 4 at his place of employment, with an M1 carbine (a previous generation’s iteration of a light AR type weapon).
- Chris Harper-Mercer was 26 when he shot up Umpqua Community College with multiple weapons.....which curiously, he had brought along an AR15 which he did not use.
All of these names represent nearly half of the names taken from this Wikipedia list of 23 mass shootings, involving 25 shooters:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_sh ... ted_States. None of these people were deterred from doing what they did by the fact of being well over the age of 21. Most were over 25. The remain 14 shooters, not listed above in my post here, were 20, 35, 41, 25, 19, 45 (Patrick Sherrel/Edmund Post Office shooting, originated the term “going postal”), 17 & 18 (Columbine), 41, 28, 39, 34, 44, and 16 years old at the time they committed their mass shooting sprees. 23 shootings, involving 25 shooters. That’s
18 - more than half of the 25 shooters - being 25 or older.
The 18 year old brain might not be fully mature, but it looks like the 25 year old and older brain is actually more likely to pull off a mass shooting. Consequently, I have to conclude that ANY age limit is purely arbitrary.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT