In many American states, 18 is old enough to buy a rifle
Just months after his 18th birthday, Nikolas Cruz went to a Florida gun store to buy a weapon. But there were limits on what he could purchase at his age.
Cruz wasn’t old enough to buy any of the handguns at the store. But there’s no such restriction for rifles, shotguns or the AR-15 that police say he used to carry out the nation’s deadliest school shooting in more than five years.
The Florida high school shooting has revived the debate over age requirements for gun purchases in a country where a patchwork of laws and rural states steeped in hunting culture allow kids as young as 14 to buy rifles.
In most states, it’s easier for teenagers to buy rifles than handguns. Federal law requires someone to be at least 21 to buy a handgun from a licensed dealer, but only 18 in most places to buy a long gun. In some states you can buy a rifle at the age of 14 or 16.
Gun-rights advocates call the long gun an integral part of American culture, allowing kids and their parents to bond while out in the woods hunting.
Gun-control advocates counter the laws are outdated and fail to recognise the toll that modern, militaristic-style long guns have played in killing scores of innocent men, women and children. They say such rifles should not be in the same category as a bolt-action rifle that a young hunter uses to shoot a deer.
The AR plays an oversized role in many of the most high-profile shootings, including the nightclub shooting in Orlando and the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history: the attack by a gunman holed up in a Las Vegas hotel that left 58 dead and hundreds injured.
States including Maine, Minnesota and Vermont allow teens 14 or 16 years old to buy or purchase long guns without parental consent, with some exceptions. Only two states — Hawaii and Illinois — have imposed stiffer age restrictions, requiring someone to be at least 21 before they can purchase a long gun.
The disparity in age requirements between handguns and long guns exists largely because of the popularity of hunting in the US. —