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Dragonfighter wrote:

Purplehood wrote:

Listen to the talk of any one who has been in the military for 10 or more years and they'll tell you loudly that they themselves don't trust the 18-21 year olds.

I was 17 when I joined the Marines. I have been handling firearms since I was 7 or 8 years old.

It is my fervent belief that If I am old enough to die for my country I am old enough to rate all its privileges.

There are 30 year Military veterans that I would never trust around firearms.

We used to have a saying: There is nothing more dangerous than a butter bar lieutenant with a pair of binos and a compass.

Listen to the talk of any one who has been in the military for 10 or more years and they'll tell you loudly that they themselves don't trust the 18-21 year olds.

Douva wrote:

KD5NRH wrote:

Hoi Polloi wrote:How many different ages of majority do we have in our country?

IIRC, these are just a few...
Young teens can be certified and tried as adults and not as juveniles.
16 to drive unaccompanied
17 to join the military
18 to vote and be tried as an adult
21 to drink alcohol
24 to be considered independent of one's parents for federal college grants and loans

25 to be elected to the House of Representatives
30 to be elected to the Senate
35 to be President, which leads to one of my biggest pet peeves with the Presidential order of succession; if the Speaker of the House can be as young as 25 and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate can be 30, it can then skip directly from the VP to the cabinet members, who, being appointed rather than elected, have, IMO, no business being in the succession at all.

I think that puts me near my comma quota for the day.

But in a sense, doesn't that progression simply mirror the way life works? You don't go to bed one night a pimply-faced fourteen-year-old with no concerns beyond trying to figure out how to talk to the cute girl in homeroom and then wake up the next day an adult with a job, a mortgage, a wife, and kids. Responsibility typically comes in stages.

Do we really want our laws to say that one day a person is too young to drive, join the military, vote, be tried as an adult, drink alcohol, apply for independent student loans, be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, be elected to the U.S. Senate, or be elected U.S. President and that the next day he or she is old enough to do all of the above?