The right to keep and bear arms ought to be interminably linked with the right to vote. After all, if we can’t trust someone with a personal arm, then how can we trust them with the power of law over all of us?
Once one had reached the age of majority, they are an adult and ought to be free to exercise all of their rights. As citizens, this means that once you hit 18, you may legally vote thanks to the 26th Amendment guaranteeing it. Yet another, more fundamental and more ancient, right is denied 18 to 20 year old citizens who have never lost their freedom due to criminal activity nor have been adjudicated as incapable of running their own lives due to mental illness or mental handicap: “The right to keep and bear arms” when it comes to handguns, which is also protected by the Constitution.
Thankfully, one Congressmen wishes to correct this denial of rights to adult Americans:
I just introduced the Second Amendment for Every Registrable Voter Act. HR 5112, The SAFER Voter Act, would repeal the federal law that prevents voting age adults, 18 to 20, from purchasing a handgun from a FFL.
Why should a 20-yr-old mom be denied the right to defend herself? pic.twitter.com/bjXaznxrFQ
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 1, 2018
The right to personal arms is a right going back to pre-Norman England where any freeman had the right to personal arms, including the Seax, the “assault pistol” of its time.
For freedom.
If the age of gun ownership is raised to 21 (on the wild azz claim that it would save lives) then it seems logical that nobody should be able to get an abortion before age 21 (would undoubtedly save lives)
They also shouldn’t be allowed into the military. Why would you send a child to war?
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Opinions, strongly held, YMMV.
1. The Second Amendment is a right. Period. How many other Constitutional rights are negated by a criminal conviction? If you go to jail, do you lose freedom of speech when your sentence is complete? How about freedom of religion? Can the state deny you the right to be a Baptist, Catholic, Buddhist, or atheist because you were convicted? No more trial by jury? I tend to think that the prohibition of gun ownership after a criminal conviction may have its roots in racism, but I won’t argue the point.
If a person commits a crime that should keep them from owning a gun, they should never be free again. Period.
2. The right to vote is not a constitutional right, as in spelled out in the Constitution, but Congress and the courts have effectively made it so. That being said, when a person has completed all penalties imposed by the law, they should return to full citizenship. If Congress and the courts have made voting a “constitutional right”, ten it should be restored. Will these people vote? Maybe in the first election after they are released, but it seems that they were not so concerned with civic citizenship before their convictions, so it seems unlikely to be so when they get out.