So, our liberal brethren seems interested in defining when and how adulthood can be entered into. Ok, so if we take their approach, folks under the age of 21 are unable to handle the responsibilities of adulthood. Ok, so, does that also then mean that because they wish government to become the arbiter of this, that they would be able to also require that any aspect of adult life then be also arbitrated by government. Would this include sex? Having children? entering into contracts? Joining the military? Having the vote? Where do liberal/progressive folks then draw the line? If I cannot buy a weapon until I'm 21, and government becomes the arbitrator of that, why shouldn't I expect that the liberal world would also demand that any aspect of adulthood wouldn't also be arbitrated by government?
If you are not mature enough to buy a gun, you are not mature enough to drink, join the military, or vote. The feds forced the drinking age up to 21 in states by threatening to withhold highway funds. They must not think much of 18-20 year olds. This practice of dangling money over the states' heads needs to stop. They do it with highway funds and education funds. It gives us problems like this. At what age is a person an adult and why do we have 2 tiered citizenship?
Liberal brethren??? I don't have syphillis, I don't have HIV, and I don't have any liberal brethren. The liberals have one goal in mind - totalitarian domination - and to acheive that, there can be no weapons in the hands of all of those people the liberals would send to re-education camps or gulags. Liberals are the enemy of freedom loving people - their goal is a utopian society with the blacks in one place and the hispanics in another place and without people like you and me mucking it up.
All porn containing 18-20yr old performers would instantly become child pornography. You'd turn a huge swathe of the populace into sex offenders at the stroke of a pen. Pun not intended.
I know it's off subject, but at my age, just watching them walk by is all the porn my heart can take. LOL
Why is your question only of liberals? Unless you’re proposing absolutely no statutory age limits or restrictions on anything at all, you’re accepting some form of government arbitration and unless you’re proposing a flat cut-off at the same age for everything, you’re accepting that government (as a representation of the electorate) defining appropriate ages for each element and any further exceptions, conditions or complications. I’m not sure about 21 as a limit for buying some or all firearms but I don’t see the argument that government shouldn’t be permitted to seek to make that policy via standard democratic process.
I suspect that the reason is control with an eye towards dependency. And yet, all of the collateral risk of things like teen pregnancy, single parenthood, etc are all associated risk areas that our progressive folks don't seem willing to then define or determine. If I cannot buy a weapon at 20, why should I be allowed to take on parenthood? If I cannot be assumed to be responsible for my actions, or conduct, why allow me to have kids? or enter the military? or vote?
So, in your mind, it should be left to a public referendum? Or are you suggesting that representative government should be legislating it? The question though isn't the establishment of the restriction, it is the haphazard or onerous way in which that standard is unequally applied. If, as you suggest the "standard democratic process" is ok, why is it ok to be unequal in the application of it?
Some 12 year old kids would be very reliable and trustworthy with a gun. Some 30 year old "adults" would never be safe with a gun or a even a car. It is possible that a smaller percentage of 21 year olds would be dangerous with a gun than the 18 year olds, but I don't think that study had been done. Anyway, setting the bar at 21 does not appear to be acceptable and probably not effective anyway. No control or regulation seems to result in more murders and mass shootings. So, do you have any suggestions for a better system to achieve a fair and safer society.
Ah yes, the liberal bogeyman rears its head again. Ooops, turns out it's more of a majority thing than a liberal thing. A rational response to gun violence. You know......the kind that leaves people dead. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...vor_raising_age_to_buy_gun_not_enlist_or_vote
You won't get a straight answer from doctrinaire leftists on this one. They desperately need the young, naïve voting bloc that votes overwhelmingly Democrat to keep the right to vote as young as possible, yet at the same time, are pushing what I'll call "cultural infantilization" (brains don't mature until X age bladebla) that pushes "maturity" way out into the late 20s to create more "child victims" as victimology/identity politics grist (mostly female, but male too), together with the other benefits the left derives by extending childhood, needlessly extended time in school in the net age that enriches the edu part of the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer MSM Complex for one HUGE example. Essentially, you can hook someone into a very long period of perceived victimhood (lifelong in the weakest, least intelligent) that allows sloughing off character defects and bad choices onto abstract "oppressor groups" if you indoctrinate early enough and competently. But if infantilization is a component of that, you risk the "well then they shouldn't vote yet either!" response. It's a tricky tightrope that the LW needs to walk, and just another example of LW hypocrisy and inconsistency. Have you noticed that what I'll call the "Potter/Hunger Games/Lion King Narcissist" theme of accomplishment over time has become more pervasive in our culture than the "hard work and character building" theme of accomplishment in the Protestant Work Ethic that dominated culture previously? Harry Potter, like so many "super" heroes, is "special" and "chosen" from the start. His accomplishment is already within him, just has to be discovered and cultivated (mostly through persistent ass kissing... there's the narcissistic element lol). How much fictional culture focuses on long, hard work and personal accountability towards mastery (see the old kung fu movies of the past for example)? Almost none. To answer the actual topic directly, the age of sexual consent should be at least 17 IMO, but a state law matter, same for work, driving and use of hunting firearms without direct adult supervision (I started work, gun ownership, and hunting without adults at 13, that's probably a bit too young in retrospect). Voting, cigs and alcohol consumption should be at least 21 IMO, again, all matters of state law. One of the only true regrets of my life is that I came of age under a drinking/smoking age of 18. In the current state of technology, we will likely never need mandatory draft conscription of infantry again, so the old "old enough to die for one's country, old enough to vote" is
Apparently Don was a "doctrinaire leftist" for the for a few days until the NRA put him in their back pocket again along with the rest of the GOP.
Representative government, exactly as it does with thousands of other policies and principles. There's no reason for this to be a special case. Every area should be assessed on it's individual merits. I don't see why very different situations shouldn't have different age limits (even with conditions or variations). Are you suggesting that everything should automatically have exactly the same age cut-off?
Yeah, no. The word "Trump" was nowhere in my post. Keep grinding out those inapposite, unresponsive posts, though, what? $.02 apiece or so? You'll be rich one day.
It was really just a feeble attempt to push back against the very thought of common sense gun control. Because the right would rather do nothing and let people die than cross the NRA.
Which blissfully misses the point entirely. Does our mob then define what adulthood should then require? Or is it government acting in it's absence? The question, again, is what becomes the limit, not your narrow myopic ability to attempt to derail the conversation. Make a stab at answering the questions, not your limited perspective. Can government then regulate what we do? Can they limit the ability to have children? Become married? Join the military? Get a job? Where is this limit of social engineering that you seem willing to accept?
I am not. I am asking what the limits are from the liberal perspective. If, as we have seen, there is an appetite to create these types of restrictions, then what is the limit? Adulthood itself? Contracts? Marriage? Kids? Sex? More, we haven't even gotten to the part of the conversation that asks, it is rational to actually create this at all?
