What Is An Adult?

If Congress wants 18 year-olds to die for them across the world, then they must be afforded the same rights as every other American adult.

What is an adult?

Cornell Law School defines adulthood as follows:

An Adult is an individual who has reached the age of majority. The age of majority refers to the age at which a person will be defined by law to be an adult. This will be accompanied by the rights and responsibilities of adulthood. The age of majority varies from state by state and from country to country. Most countries have set the age of 18 being the age of majority.

In almost every state, 18 year-olds are adults. The only exceptions are Alabama, and Nebraska, where the age of majority is 19 years-old.

So, in general terms, you become an adult in the United States on your 18th birthday.

Then why is the definition of adulthood being arbitrarily twisted and redefined by a collection of “bipartisan” politicians under the guise of addressing “gun violence”?

Last week, the House passed a “sweeping” gun control bill — known as the “Protecting Our Kids Act” — that would raise the minimum age to purchase a so-called “assault rifle” to 21 years-old. While the bill passed 223 votes to 204 (with five Republicans supporting the proposed legislation), it’s — thankfully — dead-on-arrival in the U.S. Senate.

But twenty senators — ten Democrats and ten Republicans — celebrated their own “tentative agreement” over the weekend, outlining a framework of changes.

In one section, the framework calls for “enhanced background check for under 21 gun buyers and a short pause to conduct the check,” noting that “young buyers can get the gun only after the enhanced check is completed.”

Not only is the Republican support of this framework an example of ideological betrayal, the call to place further controls over legal adults in the United States is both arbitrary, discriminatory, and — on a dispassionate level — entirely ineffective.