IMO, it’s just another piece of useless, feel-good legislative tripe dreamed up by politicians to make it seem like they’re doing something useful.
Monster:
This is a hard one to prove. To prove something is legal, I cannot just quote a law like “possession of a handgun by a person over 18 is legal”(since there isn’t one), but rather, I would have to prove it is NOT illegal. Laws usually only say what is NOT legal, not what IS legal. So I would have to prove this by showing you no such law preventing possession under 21 exists. To do this, I would have to quote every law there is and say “see, it doesn’t say it anywhere…” I was about to post here and just claim “professional” knowledge as a federal firearms dealer and Florida certified law enforcement officer, and hope you could just accept that but I decided to look harder for proof.
I could show you Florida Law, but I would have to quote several statutes to prove it is not illegal.
I did find this though. And I like it, because it comes out and says that they are getting their laws from federal standards.
From: http://www.jus.state.nc.us/NCJA/firearms.htm
You cannot buy the gun. But you can possess it. You can’t legally buy ammunition either, but that’s your problem 
.
Though this is from North Carolina, the laws in Florida are pretty much the same. They make it illegal for minors under 18 to possess. I would assume they are pretty much the same in every state. There is no federal law preventing a person 18 years old from possessing a handgun. There are only rules against selling a handgun to a person under 21.
So most (if not all) states follow this same rule. I do not know the laws in every state so I cannot say it’s impossible for a state to make the age for possession higher. But, like I said, the Federal Law does not prevent you from owning a handgun.
Like pkbites says, I have known officers who could not buy their own duty weapons, or ammo. They have to have it bought for them by a parent or the department. But they can own and possess the firearm because they are at least 18. Federal law does not make an exception for them because they are police officers. They have to follow the same laws as everyone else.
In California, you can be elected to any statewide office once you turn 18. So if you’re feeling ambitious and you were born in 1984, swing by California and try to give Gray Davis a challenge for reelection.
Isn’t this really a question of whether the government has the right to permit or prohibit certain conduct by certain people based upon arbitrary rules. Clearly, in the Constitution, the ability to serve in certain governmental capacities is limited. For instance, one cannot become a Representative until 25; a Senator until 30; and President or VP until 35 providing that the person was born in the US in addition to being a citizen.
Moreover, some of the other limits that have been cited can be either broadened or limited. One can serve in the military, for instance (and presumably, be killed) when they are 17 if they have a guardian’s permission. Similarly, convicted felons in many states have restrictions on the right to vote. I would also point out, that the right to vote for 18-year-olds only came about in the '60s with the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-war Movement. Previously, the age at which one could vote in federal elections was 21 and a Constitutional Amendment was required to change that (the 25th, BTW).
Our government has numerous structures, such as the FDA, that have been set up to protect us from dangerous business practices. As an extention, IMO, such structures have established as policy, that they also have a mission to protect us from ourselves and from one another (which, it seems to me, police forces do routinely). To do so, arbitrary age limits when people are deemed “responsible enough” to handle certain “dangerous” priveleges.
It seems to me that everyone must decide for themselves whether they feel that the government (be it federal, state or local) should have the right to establish such arbitrary restrictions. If you feel that the government has a place establishing regualations and setting policy “for the public good,” then the the fact that certain age limits may seem arbitrary should not be of considerable concern. At the least you should be able to illustrate why a 21-year-old, for instance, is no different than an 18-year-old for the purposes of drinking. If you don’t believe that the government has any place in determining policy based on “arbitrary” criteria, then you will also have to do away with certain of those governmental structures that have developed over the last century or so.
A Constitutional amendment isn’t necessary to change the voting age… only to guarantee the right to vote to a new group. The Constitution doesn’t say “only citizens over 18 may vote”, it says “no citizen over the age of 18 may be denied the right to vote”. A state could presumably decide to let 16-year-olds vote, but it isn’t required to.
Millennium boy,
You are absolutely right. The point I was trying to make, though, was that the Constitution does not establish who can and who cannot vote. The 25th amendment goes a long way towards establishing who is not permitted to vote and who is, though.
COB