HOW WE SEE IT

Arkansas Right To Join Suit Over Adulthood

Riddle us this: When is someone in the United States both an adult and a child?

Alternatively, when can an American take a bullet for his country but be treated like a child by his government?

Answer: When he’s old enough to join the military but not to be trusted by the federal government with purchasing guns any American21 and older can buy.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel recently joined legal oft cials in 21 other states to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a federal ban that keeps those American citizens 18 to 20 years old from legally buying certainguns. They can vote at 18. They can serve in the military. But the federal government classifi es them as limited adults with regard to fi rearm sales.

“Adults who are 18, 19 and 20 honorably defend our country when it is at war. These same Americans should be able to defend themselves and their families when they are at home,” Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange wrote for the group.

Strange also said the states “want their citizens to have a liberty that is guaranteed to them by the federal Constitution but currently denied to them by the federal government.”

The law at issue was enacted in 1968, a particularly tumultuous period in the nation’s history. It prohibits the sale of fi rearms other than shotguns and rifles to adults between the ages of 18 and 20. The National Rifl e Association filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on behalf of members who wanted to purchase handguns but were not permitted to under the law.

Arkansas law defines a minor as someone younger than 18. The Arkansas Constitution says residents of the state “shall have the right to keep and bear arms, for their common defense.”

“In this particular sphere, most States have decided that 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds ought to be allowed to exercise this aspect of their fundamental right to bear arms. Yet Congress has sought to withdraw this liberty from the same class of people. In doing so it has disparaged, as ‘emotionally immature’ and ‘prone to criminal behavior,’ the very persons these States seek to protect,” Strange wrote in the brief.

There will be some, of course, who believe any statute that keeps any individual from purchasing a gun is a good thing.

They will support this federal ban because they support any measure that helps reduce the number of guns available to Americans, because no gun is a good gun.

This limitation, however, defies the concept of equal protection under the law. Adulthood arrives at 18 years old.

For whatever reasons, that’s the age states and, at least most of the time, the federal government accept a person’s adulthood. With that should come all the rights and responsibilities of any other adult American.

It is particularly insulting that young men and women in the military, who handle weapons far more serious than those involved in this clash, are expected to be only partial adults while they serve.

We hope the attorneys general are successful, not because we want the proliferation of guns, but a proliferation of liberty aff orded other adults.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 09/11/2013

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