Handguns for 18-Year-Olds?

[SecularMotion]

The National Rifle Association keeps coming up with clever new ways to undermine public safety.

Just in the past year, the gun-rights group sought to scuttle basic gun controls enacted by the District of Columbia, including a ban on powerful semiautomatic weapons in the nation’s capital. The group also blocked common-sense efforts in Congress to bar people on the F.B.I.’s terrorist watch list from buying guns and explosives. It kept open the deadly loophole in federal law that lets gun traffickers and other unqualified buyers to obtain weapons without background checks at gun shows.

Last week, President Obama had barely nominated a new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is supposed to control firearms — Andrew Traver, a well-qualified career professional — before the gun lobby denounced him as “deeply aligned with gun control advocates.” Mr. Traver’s sin? Associating with a police chief’s group that wants to reduce the use of handguns on city streets. The nomination was rated dead on arrival in the next Congress, where the N.R.A. will, if anything, be more powerful.

Finally, the gun lobby has filed two lawsuits in federal court in Lubbock, Tex., to compel the State of Texas to allow young people between the ages of 18 and 20 years old to buy handguns and carry them concealed in public places.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/opinion/26fri1.html?ref=opinion