Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire I think its troublesome that some think you need to be 18 to buy or own a firearm

For those who think raising the age to buy a RIFLE from 18 to 21 will make any significant difference...

In 2014 we had a record low murder rate of 4.3 murders per 100,000 people. There were 12,312 murders and 248 were linked to a rifle.

In 2020 we had a 50% higher murder rate of 6.5 murders per 100,000 people. There were 17,815 murders and 318 were linked to a rifle.

Murders increased by 5,500 - rifle murders increased by 70. Less than 2% of the increase in murders was rifle related.


Data.. it's important.

Curiosity has me intrigued. Where did it state that voting was to be at the age of 21 in the constitution?

I may have overlooked it.

In fact, when the Constitution was ratified in 1788, it made no mention of a federal voting age. It was up to the states. In most cases, you had to be 21 years old, and a white, male, landowning protestant to vote.

Social changes in the early 19th century led to the first major voting reforms. In the 1820s, contested elections convinced many people that broader suffrage, or the right to vote, was needed. By 1830, religion and property requirements had been abolished in almost all state constitutions, although suffrage was still only guaranteed to white males over the age of 21. The last state to remove restrictions on universal white, male suffrage was North Carolina in 1856.

The expansion of male suffrage caught the attention of female activists, who in 1848 organized for the first time at the Seneca Falls convention in New York. These activists declared that women should have the right to vote. However, women would not be the next group to receive suffrage. That would fall upon freed African Americans at the end of the Civil War. In 1868, former slaves were guaranteed citizenship with the passing of the Fourteenth Amendment. Black males were guaranteed the right to vote in 1870 with the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment, although some Southern states adopted literacy and education tests to limit access to the polls.

As the 20th century began, all males 21 or older could legally vote. However, women still couldn't, and many white women were particularly upset that black males received suffrage before them. This spurned a new wave of activism. Wyoming was the first territory, and then state, to grant universal suffrage to women. It would not be until after World War I, however, that this became a national measure. The Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920.

The fight to lower the voting age began in earnest decades earlier, in the early 1940s, in response to a different conflict: World War II. Between 1940 and 1942, Congress passed successive Selective Service laws that lowered the military draft age first from 21 to 20, then from 20 to 18 in 1942. The 1942 age limit sparked debate in Congress about the connection between the voting age of 21 and the age of military service, and the fairness of conscripting men into service who could not vote.

“If young men are to be drafted at 18 years of age to fight for their Government,” said Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan as Congress considered his bill to lower the voting age, “they ought to be entitled to vote at 18 years of age for the kind of government for which they are best satisfied to fight.”