I'm 19 and I'm going to legally buy a handgun!

First, congrats.

Second - it's your butt on the line if posters are wrong. If you want to know for sure, call the Attorney General's office in your state, or see if you can print something off their website. I'm not trying to call anyone out here, but... just saying as general advice. Gun message boards aren't the law. CYA.
 
Also, consider this...

You probably can post a WTB ad here--but if the handgun is transferred across State lines, you have to get it transferred through an FFL--and they could possibly refuse to do so, based on your age.

If it is legal in your State, and you can do a FTF sale, go for it! Let us know what you purchased.
 
"Yeah, I'm looking for a self defense weapon. I'm thinking Glock and I must add I'm only 18."
"Oh, your 18? I can't sell you a Glock, but, how about a Barrett .50?"
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Thanks for a great laugh which illustrates the absurdity of the law. :cool:
 
Nathan,

You can buy any hand gun you want from a private party, it Is state law that 18 for private transactions and 21 for FFL transactions. What pray tell are you interested in? (I'm in Athens, Tn.);)
 
A family member

Yes you can also buy silencers, machineguns and other NFA weapons at 18 just not from a dealer. You could do NFA except for machineguns due to the manuf. ban on a form 1 yourself if you had the mind for a sawed off shotgun.

Getting back to the handgun. An adult family member can not buy a gun for you from a FFL dealer because you can not legally buy it from a dealer, but a family member can buy a handgun and then gift it to you.
 
In Jewish Society when a boy reaches 13 he becomes a man and is suppose to act like a man. I think in our society we don't put enough pressure on our kids to grow up so they don't. If we would expect them to act mature, say at 16, then they'd be held responsible and they'd have to learn to be mature at 16. I think 16 is a good age to take responsiblilty for your life. Besides, the 18 or 21 or (insert age here) that we've come up with are pretty much random numbers that someone just kind of threw out there. There's no real study that I know of that proves that someone is responsible at such n' such an age. It's what society will tollerate that makes kids grow up or not grow up.
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Actually there have been several studies that have determined that in most people the part of the brain that can determine consequenses vs. action does not develop until around the the age of 25. This accounts for the youthful mistakes we pass off to being young and is an advantage in the military. Young people can be told to fire at the enemy and charge into battle without considering that they may be killed. In some cases the brain does develop sooner and in some never. Either way it is a physical development rather than just emotional but we call it maturity. Also demonstrates why getting married before 25 is bad. :)
 
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See, there is science and logic to the whole wait until you are 25 attitude. Yet again I am vindicated.
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No, you are not. As noted there are plenty of people well beyond 25 who have no sense of responsiblity. The brain may generally develop to "maturity" at 25 in our current culture but the study does not account for other cultures and times where responsiblity was given to people at younger ages forcing them to develop at different rates. Continue the current trend of "responsibility free" child rearing and you will see the age climb, possibly reaching the point where "maturity" never comes.

Children who are raised isolated from society during their formative years are NEVER able to fully catch up to those rasied within society (the neural pathways are never formed at a time when the brain is still developing resulting is a "point of no return". At that point the "child" will never become fully socialized most notably with lingerring speach problems.). The same can easily apply to the development of maturity if a child is raised in an enviorment completely lacking in it. You can wind up with an adult who has never developed a sense of responsibility and never will. My father in law, coddled by parents through is formative years and into adulthood, is incapable of accepting responsibility for himself. His siblings and somewhat estranged children are forced to look out for the helpless mope who would otherwise almost certainly be a homeless bum.

Maturity does not develop in a vaccum. Those under 25 may have the sense of "immortality" that makes them suitable for military service but would anyone argue that an 18 or 19 year old who survived the D-Day landings didn't mature quickly and gained a sense of mortality?

Experience drives development and without any experience before the brain finishes growing the adult becomes a mental cripple.
 
Different times call for different "norms". A hundred years ago a 16 year old was not the same person a 16 year old is today. But then a hundred years ago a bunch of retired old coots didn't spend their time on computers either.

Personally I blame HS. I think the best way to make sure young people don't grow up is to surround them with other young people most of the time. I worked in coal mines in my teens and someone kicked my ass when I did some stupid kid stuff. Then I joined the military and wonder of wonders I was one of the mature guys and had to do the ass kicking, coincidence? I don't think so. Still, this is not about what can be but what is.
 
You may very well be onto to something there in that possibly our current culture has caused the delay in the maturity of the brain and possibly instead of lowering the drinking and voting age we should raise it. :o I see one thing with much of our "society" that people of all ages play video games and rather than having to suffer the finality of being killed they can just hit the reset button and start over. Before someone goes off on a rant about it turning normal kids into serial killers that is not it at all. Sometimes when some people become lost in video games, or even paintball wars they start to confuse games with reality and the finality of a .45 bullet and a paintball becomes blurry.

Does the 18 year-old want a gun for self-defense or because it looks cool in Mortal Kombat (or whatever game it is)? Does the 50 year-old want a certain gun because that is the one Marshall Dillon used. There are lots of variables.
 
Pardon me for my sense of gratitude and relief that neither I nor any of my offspring ever had to learn life's lessons from working in a coal mine! :D
 
Hey, I'm a hillbilly, I was and am glad I had that job. I was making 7 bucks an hour as a teenager in the 1970s, they don't pay that at mcdonald's even today. I didn't have to go down into a pit though, strip mines, still nasty work.
 
---RANT---

Before someone goes off on a rant about it turning normal kids into serial killers that is not it at all.
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Actually, that is it. Read On Killing or On Combat by LT COL Dave Grossman ret. He goes through the numerous school shootings and shows, with truly credible evidence, that the video games are the problem.

I fail to see why kids these days are the way they are, actually. I know it sounds funny because I am only 24 myself. However, my folks raised me a little differently. I grew up in a bad neighborhood, so I saw plenty of weapon violence all the time. I remember getting spanked for playings cowboys and indians because "you don't point that g-d pistol at anyone, ever, unless you want them dead!!!" My dad took that lesson very seriously. I guess that's why his sons are responsible with weapons.

He stressed the responsibility everywhere. I bought my own car at 16 that I worked for from age 12. Got in trouble at school and paid double for it at home. Why can't kids do this stuff now?

End mini-rant
 
You may very well be onto to something there in that possibly our current culture has caused the delay in the maturity of the brain and possibly instead of lowering the drinking and voting age we should raise it.
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That is not really what I am saying. I think by delaying the assignment of responsibility we inhibit the development of maturity. If anything we should be LOWERING the drinking age and keeping voting no higher than 18. We should move more towards real criminal records earlier, say 16, and make a very big deal out of it. Blast these kids with the reality that the time to grow up is now a little sooner than it once was. Continue to push the risk, responsibility and privilege time back further and you only wind up with an older person who has not learned it.

I also believe that the time in which that maturity can be properly developed is finite. Push back learning responsibility far enough and you will wind up with a physical adult who never fully grasps the social concept of responsibility, the same as "feral children" (being real here, not referring to my neighbors kids) miss out on the limited window in which to properly develop social and language skills. I watched some very interesting documentaries on the issue of "feral children" and the effect on their permanent development. I need to look them up again...
 
It is too bad we have squandered 500 billion dollars moving sand around in the middle east. That money might have bought a lot of law enforcement officers, jails, prisons, correctional officers, courts, judges, DA's .... Maybe Homeland Security might have had a real meaning here at home.

In such a situation, I'd have no problem with even 16 year olds being able to buy a handgun. Holding folks accountable for the actions, reactions, and inactions is a pipe dream, unfortunately. With the current BS regarding folks shooting people and being back on the streets in 6 months, no way do I support youngsters being able to buy guns. In the military, the military very closely controls the handling of weapons, even then shooting each other still happens. There is virtually no monitoring in the civilian sector. Too bad really.
 
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