Age 21 study

J

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
 
James I hate to rain on your study but the 1968 GCA established 21 as the legal age to purchase a handgun and 18 for a long arm nation wide.

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Gunslinger

We live in a time in which attitudes and deeds once respected as courageous and honorable are now scorned as being antiquated and subversive.
 
Hey Gunslinger. Don't worry about my parade, I just feel a bit stupid right now. I simply "assumed" since Gore was rantin that there was no Federal law. Silly of me.

Oh well, guess I have to take my lumps since I posted the note. The worst part is the time to get the data was a total waste.

James - feeling dumb
 
Newsweek did a story about after the Colombine thing (big surprise) they had a graph what showedthe age requriement in each state. its was about a month and a half ago.
 
Jimmy...

Like Ed said, don't feel dumb....unlike our VP you bothered to look stuff up...and you obviously read and learned something.

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"
 
Gunslinger. You are half right. GCA 68 prohibits anyone under 18 from purchasing a handgun from a federally licensed dealer. In states that allow, say an 18 year old to buy, he can buy from a private party.
There was a deal about 10-12 years ago where Dan Rather(Ithink it was Rather) and crew hired an 18 year old kid to try and illegally buy handguns.
He got, if memory serves, 2 handguns from a private sale, but none from a licensed dealer. Then the good (?) Mr. Rather got a BATF agent to go after the guy that sold the handgun, all recorded by hidden camera. When the ATF agent checked out Rather's allegations, Mr. Rather was rather impolitely told that no law was broken.
I still have the article around someplace, but with over 1,500 gun mags in stacks all over the place, I couldn't trace the source in a year. I think it was either in HANDLOADER, or RIFLE magazine and by Neal Knox, but I'm not sure.
Paul B.
 
Jimmy,
And your honest concern and efforts:
- separate you well from the emotion-driven ignorami of the opposition;
- show a fairness that many modern people feel is out-dated;
- and wins you a lot of good company on TFL.

All,
Who was the prisoner of the Viet Cong who, upon being told he would be executed in the morning, wrote his son a letter saying something to the effect, "...Integrity is the bottom line...."?

(Would appreciate a confirmed reference. Thanks.)
 
JBC - Thanks for your efforts. Failure is a beeter teacher than success, as you tend to learn more in the process. Every time you find out what doesn't work get you closer to findingout what does. There's an old saw that goes:

Good judgment comes from experience, however, experience comes from bad judgment (i.e. if you don't try stuff, you don't learn much), therefore, good judgment comes from bad judgment (ergo, ya gotta start somewhere), just don't make the same mistake twice.
Carry on, M2
 
Jimmy, you didn't fail at all. You just tracked something interesting but it wasn't what you thought.

Compared to gun dealer transfers, private party sales aren't a huge chunk of the pie even in lax-private-transfer states. Therefore these state laws won't affect 18-21 gun ownership much at all.

What you've tracked is that states with generally pro-gun laws have lower crime rates in these age groups and all the rest. You can track pro-gun laws any of several ways, age of legal purchase being pretty much as good as any. CCW laws are probably the best, that and maybe Class3.

Don't sweat it, you did fine.

Jim March
Equal Rights for CCW Home Page
http://www.ninehundred.com/~equalccw

[This message has been edited by Jim March (edited June 15, 1999).]
 
JimmyBCool I was remiss in not telling you that I applaud your effort. Right now with all of the misinformation being spread we all need to be more vigilant in pursueing facts. Clinton recently said he was going to push laws making it illegal for juveniles to own bombs. He failed to mention (if he even knows) that it is already illegal according to the 1934 NFA. I equate it to saying auto theft is illegal and now we're going to make a law making strealing cars against the law.
People see this nonsense and are aghast that it IS legal for these kids to own bombs and it's good we have a president thoughtful enough to make it illegal.

No, it wasn't a waist of your time. It demonstrated you are concerned enough to put out some effort to educate yourself and inform the members here. That makes you smarter then our VP. A fact that really comes as no surprise.
Thank you.

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Gunslinger

We live in a time in which attitudes and deeds once respected as courageous and honorable are now scorned as being antiquated and subversive.
 
Thanks everyone for not destroying me. The thing is, we who defend the RTKBAs can not make as many mistakes as the anti-gun people. For example, Gores mistake will never make headlines. But a similar mistake by Heston would be front page to further destroy the image of the NRA.

What depresses me is that this faux paux by Gore is not being reported AT ALL. it is a bigger mistake than how to spell potato(e), and recieves 1/1000th the media coverage.

How can we win with a hostile media?

James

A really neat tag line goes here as soon as I think if it.
 
If the feds (Clintonites) are so concerned about keeping guns out of the hands of "kids" under age 21, then why haven't they raised the military enlistment age minimum to 21?

Answer: They know that the older you get, the harder it is to influence/indoctrinate you. They also know that "kids" 17 to 20 are very capable of operating heavy-duty firearms in an efficient and relatively responsible manner. Also, the military would evaporate (lose most of its manpower) if such a policy were inacted.

This is such a blatant double standard, I can't believe no one has raised hell about it.
 
I've raised this point in the past. Americans can vote, sign legally binding contracts and get married all at the age of 18. Yet they can't buy a handgun or alcohol until their 21. If you can get married you *need* to be allowed to drink.
wink.gif


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Gunslinger

We live in a time in which attitudes and deeds once respected as courageous and honorable are now scorned as being antiquated and subversive.
 
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