Bill to raise age for buying certain guns
Legislation would make age for purchasing rifles and shotguns in state the same as for handguns
Amid heightened attention to gun access since the high school shooting massacre in Florida, three California lawmakers Thursday announced a bill that would raise the age limit for purchasing rifles and shotguns from 18 to 21, the same as for handguns.
“California already wisely mandates that someone be at least 21 years of age to purchase a handgun,” said the bill’s author, Assemblyman Rob Bonta D- Oakland. “It’s time to extend that common-sense law to long guns in order to enhance public safety.”
The move comes after a troubled 19-year- old ex-student killed 17 former classmates and teachers in Parkland on Feb. 14 with a military-style rifle he was able to buy legally in that state.
Since then, Senators Dianne Feinstein, D- Calif., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., introduced a bill that would raise the minimum age for buying military-style assault rifles across the country to 21. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Rep. John Faso, R-N.Y., voiced support for the idea. So did the governor of Florida and even President Donald Trump. Major retailers including Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart announced they no longer will sell firearms to buyers under age 21.
But critics called the proposed California law an unconstitutional breach of Second Amend-
ment gun rights and said it would do nothing to quell gun violence.
“This is an example of legislation that’s all show and no go,” said Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California. “It doesn’t prevent anything but law abiding citizens from exercising their constitutional rights.”
Bonta was joined in authoring the bill, AB 3, by Assemblyman David Chiu, D- San Francisco, and state Senator Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley.
Under federal law, you have to be 18 to buy a rifle or shotgun and 21 to buy a handgun from licensed dealers. Federal law allows unlicensed sales, such as at gun shows, at any age for rifles and shotguns and at 18 for handguns. Federal law also lets anyone older than 18 possess a handgun and sets no age limit for long gun possession.
While many states including California go further than federal law in restricting handgun sales, only Hawaii and Illinois set a minimum age of 21 to buy or possess a rifle or shotgun, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Supporters of California’s AB 3 said young adults ages 18 to 20 are statistically more likely to commit homicides, arguing they represent 4 percent of the population but commit 17 percent of gun homicides, according to the 2015 FBI Supplementary Homicides Reports.
“Californians under age 21 can’t purchase alcohol, tobacco and other health hazardous items,” Skinner argued. “So why should they be able to buy guns?”
But Paredes countered that if 18-20-year- olds are so irresponsible, then they shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the armed forces or vote.
“If they’re too irresponsible to own a gun, they’re probably too irresponsible to vote, because casting a vote could have life and death impacts,” Paredes said. “The bill authors can’t have it both ways — either 18-20-year- olds are adults and have all the rights all legal adults have, or they’re not.”
Bill supporters noted that some of the worst mass shootings, including Parkland and the 2012 slaughter of 20 pupils and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., were attributed to youths under age 21.
They added that themilitary- style “modern sporting rifles” often known as “assault rifles” — civilian semiautomatic versions of the AR-15 and AK- 47 automatic weapons used by armed forces around the world — can be particularly deadly.
“Modern rifles pose a greater threat than handguns and a similar age restriction should apply,” said Amanda Wilcox, Legislation and Policy Chair for the California Chapters of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and sponsor of AB 3. “Raising the minimum age to purchase a long gun is a reasonable step to improve public safety.”
Bonta’s of f ice noted that his bill does not prevent possession of a long gun, so itwould not stop a younger person from going hunting with a parent and using one of the parent’s guns.
But critics note that California has long banned assault weapons like the AR-15 style rifle used in the Parkland shooting, yet mass shootings with the banned weapons still occur. In 2015, a married couple armed with AR-15type rifles shot up a San Bernardino County public health department holiday party, killing 14. They point out that the Sandy Hook shooter used his mother’s gun.
Pistols, which already have an age 21 limit in California and several other states, tend to be the weapon of choice in murders. According to the FBI’s annual Crime in the United States report, of a total of 13,455 murders in 2015, 9,616 involved firearms. Handguns were involved in 6,447 of those murders, rifles in 252 and shotguns in 269. The type of firearm was undetermined for 2,477 gun murders that year.