JimmyBCool
New member
I had a little bit of time to kill so I did a bit of research. Please, this isn't a true definitive study as I only spent about 1 hour
doing it. Sources are:
State legal age restrictions on handgun purchase - NRA websight (interesting someone on this BBS said Texas is 21 but I
could not find that in there so it remains 18). I found 15 states with age 21 restrictions. The rest I could not find any age or it
was 18 (one state 19, New Mexico - go figure).
I then visited www.ojp.usdoj.gov (government websight) to obtian some statistics. They weren't exactly what I wanted.
What I have are the Estimated Homicide Rate by State for two different groups. The age 14-24 and age 17-24.
I then seperated states by age allowed (15 states age 21, 35 states age 18. I did not include DC, which had numbers off the
scale).
Using data for he latest 4 years provided (1994-1997) I summed each state group and divided by number of states in the
group. The results are:
1994-1997 - States with age 21 restriction on handgun purchase, homicide rate of 14-24 year olds was 25.9.
1994-1997 - States with age 18 restriction on handgun purchase, homicide rate of 14-24 year olds was 21.7.
Strangely, states with less restrictions had a lower homocide rate by those aged 14-24.
When the same calculation is performed against the younger 14-17 year old perpetrators the results are:
1994-1997 - States with age 21 restriction on handgun purchase, homicide rate of 14-17 year olds was 18.
1994-1997 - States with age 18 restriction on handgun purchase, homicide rate of 14-17 year olds was 15.1.
Now, I for one don't think there is a corelation. It is silly to think that allowing younger age purchase of guns makes us
SAFER. No, the relationship is probably other laws and attitudes. For example, I would guess that the states with higher age
limitations also further restrict ALL ctizens ability to carry/own firearms leaving them defenseless against predatory criminals.
But, make what you want of this little study. It helped me kill some time, and as usual shows how ignorant and out of touch
the gun grabbers are.
James
doing it. Sources are:
State legal age restrictions on handgun purchase - NRA websight (interesting someone on this BBS said Texas is 21 but I
could not find that in there so it remains 18). I found 15 states with age 21 restrictions. The rest I could not find any age or it
was 18 (one state 19, New Mexico - go figure).
I then visited www.ojp.usdoj.gov (government websight) to obtian some statistics. They weren't exactly what I wanted.
What I have are the Estimated Homicide Rate by State for two different groups. The age 14-24 and age 17-24.
I then seperated states by age allowed (15 states age 21, 35 states age 18. I did not include DC, which had numbers off the
scale).
Using data for he latest 4 years provided (1994-1997) I summed each state group and divided by number of states in the
group. The results are:
1994-1997 - States with age 21 restriction on handgun purchase, homicide rate of 14-24 year olds was 25.9.
1994-1997 - States with age 18 restriction on handgun purchase, homicide rate of 14-24 year olds was 21.7.
Strangely, states with less restrictions had a lower homocide rate by those aged 14-24.
When the same calculation is performed against the younger 14-17 year old perpetrators the results are:
1994-1997 - States with age 21 restriction on handgun purchase, homicide rate of 14-17 year olds was 18.
1994-1997 - States with age 18 restriction on handgun purchase, homicide rate of 14-17 year olds was 15.1.
Now, I for one don't think there is a corelation. It is silly to think that allowing younger age purchase of guns makes us
SAFER. No, the relationship is probably other laws and attitudes. For example, I would guess that the states with higher age
limitations also further restrict ALL ctizens ability to carry/own firearms leaving them defenseless against predatory criminals.
But, make what you want of this little study. It helped me kill some time, and as usual shows how ignorant and out of touch
the gun grabbers are.
James