Here's a small list of things you might be too young to do in the US, but you can still buy a gun.
Vote. You’re too young to vote on gun laws, but you can buy a gun.
Open a bank account. Need somewhere to put your money? The mattress will do. Protect it with that gun you bought.
Buy a lottery ticket. So many people die from lottery tickets. Paper is dangerous.
Buy fireworks. You might blow yourself up! Fireworks are clearly too dangerous. Shotguns are safe though.
Buy cigarettes. You’re not mature enough to set yourself down the road to lung cancer, but you’re mature enough to buy a deadly weapon.
Buy a house. Signing a mortgage is a huge decision.
Be an organ donor. If you accidentally kill yourself with that shotgun you bought legally, you’re unable to donate those organs to those in need because you’re not old enough to make that decision.
Make a will. If you accidentally kill yourself with that shotgun you bought legally, you’re unable to tell the State who you want to leave your assets to…assuming you have any since you couldn’t open a bank account or buy a house anyway.
Apply to see your birth certificate if you were adopted. Finding out who your real parents are might be too traumatic.
Some of you might have realized by now that that’s a list of things you can’t do until you turn 18. Well, under federal law, an unlicensed person – meaning your Grandpa or the gun nut down the street or just some random guy selling crap out of the trunk of his car – can sell a long gun or long gun ammunition to a person of any age. There are also no age restrictions for possessing a long gun or long gun ammunition under federal law.
Individual states do have the freedom to make tighter restrictions, but unfortunately, almost half of them have no further regulations for possessing a long gun. Of course, a long gun – like a rifle or a shot gun – is cumbersome and sometimes hard to shoot, so maybe we should be focused on handguns?
Well if you want to buy a handgun from some random guy, you can do that before you’re legally allowed to adopt a child, gamble in Vegas, or have a drink. Again, states can make their own laws, but how effective are they really? Plus, if you really want something and you can’t get it in your state, just drive across the border to the next state. I come from an area in SC where fireworks are a big seller because the laws across the border in North Carolina are so much more prohibitive.
But that’s guns in the US. I have to show ID, provide a blood sample, offer up a firstborn child, and do a Chekhov monologue to buy Sudafed, but some kid on a dirtbike can buy a shotgun from Bobby Joe down the street and it’s all legal and good.
