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Why Not 20?

2K views 8 replies 7 participants last post by  shep854 
#1 ·
I've been thinking a lot about the events and emotions following the Florida school shooting, and an idea occurs to me which seems to make a lot of sense: standardizing the recognized age of adulthood, for everything we usually associate with that status, to 20. Here are the issues as I see them:

Buying a gun: teenagers, especially teenage males, are generally recognized to be more volatile and less risk-averse than than their more mature counterparts. We recognize this in society by separating juvenile and adult courts, and by charging teenagers insurance rates that reflect their inflated accident risk. Tying gun purchases to an age twenty adulthood threshold wouldn't bother me a bit, especially if an exception were made for eighteen-year olds who have joined the military. Which brings us to the next point:

Military service: Eighteen has traditionally been considered draft age, but with the success our Army has experienced with a volunteer force, the need for an eighteen year old draft seems outdated. Eighteen year-olds would still be allowed to volunteer, but the draft age, I think, could easily be raised to twenty. And we must remember that the eighteen year-old draft age led us to another travesty, to wit:

Voting: We used to restrict voting to adults, which we defined as twenty-one year-olds. Then along came Viet Nam, and the chant, "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote", took hold. Society caved, and all of a sudden eighteen year-olds were voting because they could be drafted. I would suggest that the results have not been stellar for folks of our political bent. Many of us lean left before we mature (and have to start paying bills and taxes), and those left-leaning teenagers have skewed the electorate in directions which have done considerable damage to traditional values. I think a voting age tied to twenty year-old adulthood would be appropriate.

Drinking: the legal drinking age is now twenty-one in most places, but who are we kidding? It's so easy for young people to get their hands on alcohol that the idea of a "drinking age" has become somewhat laughable. Lowering an already largely-ignored barrier by a year would seem to be inconsequential, especially when it syncs with a generally accepted age of adulthood.

Finally, the best part of the proposal: it would put the Left in a dilemma. If their calls for raising the gun-buying age, ostensibly because eighteen year-olds aren't responsible, were met with calls for raising the voting age (based on the same logic), they would immediately recognize the loss of voting power they'd be facing. They'd either be forced to compromise, or be recognized for the hypocrites they are.

Voting, gun buying, drinking, being subjected to the draft: to my mind, twenty seems about right for all these things, and would standardize our concept of adulthood around a single, consistent number.
 
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Discussion starter · #6 ·
...and did not know the voting laws changed in the 60's.
The impetus started in the sixties, but the actual change came in the form of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, approved and ratified in '71.

The change to a uniform age of adulthood for all four issues (voting, drinking, gun buying, and draft eligibility) would undoubtedly require another amendment, and might be impossible to achieve. But forcing Democrats to accept raising the voting age if they want to raise the gun-buying age would present them with a formidable dilemma.
 
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