Votes, Guns, and Coming of Age in America, Fall 2021

         On Sunday, Nov. 21, the Ventura County Star reprinted an editorial from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch starting from the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and the raising of the US drinking age to 21, to argue that (using the Star’s headline) "National age floor of 21 needed for guns."

There are issues I’d like to look at and an alternative to propose.

 

In two books in the 1990s, Michael Males argued that in terms of social pathologies — crime, for example — older US teens are a normal US adult population, and usually doing better than their elders; older teens had become, as stated in these titles, a Scapegoat Generation, targets in a process of Framing Youth. 

 

The problem isn’t "What’s the matter with kids today?" but more generally with normal adult US populations, and solutions need to be more general, including with guns.

 

Such an argument can seem more likely when we note the many times (as in the Post-Dispatch piece) we see the phrase "raging hormones" and how seldom we see numbers for actual measurements of hormone levels at various ages. It is definitely plausible and it was my experience to have what felt like hormone fluctuations going through puberty. After that what seems to be crucial to the experience is whether or not people are "having sex" regularly and settling down, and in the modern US we have the issue of delayed marriage and fairly long periods in which older teens are not invited to engage in socially-endorsed sex or adult domesticity. Let’s have some numbers on testosterone and other hormones at different ages and correlations with, say, violence and crime, including the more subtle kinds.

 

More recently, there is the idea that "Young people’s brains are still developing," which I do not doubt. But it’s safe to assume young brains have been developing through recorded history and across human cultures, and the argument needs historical and cross-cultural context. The example cuts both ways, but Alexander the Great came to the throne at 20, and by the time he was old enough to be US President he’d been dead for 2-3 years and had conquered and ruled fairly well much of his world. Octavius Caesar was doing major politics at 17 or 18; Elizabeth Tudor survived her teenage years — and all sorts of young people worked and married and lived as young adults for millennia.

 

Whatever is happening with young brains, we need sensible gun laws for everyone.

 

And as long as we’re going to have young men eligible for getting guns from the government — conscription — at 18, the rule is still, "Old enough to fight; old enough to vote. Old enough to vote, old enough to drink alcohol" and own guns under the same (sensible) laws as their elders.

 

What we need in the USA is an "age of majority" — full adulthood — across the board, with enforced adult expectations, and some sort of rite of passage: perhaps a few months or up to a year of military or other public service at 18 or so, to the extent the USA can afford it. 

Demand Strong Evidence for All-Too-Familiar Claims of Crisis: "The Opioid Epidemic"

Carl Sagan popularized the excellent rule, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," which I'll call (very informally) "Sagan's Law" and to which I'll add what I'll call "Mike Males's Caution": «Politically charged claims that sound really familiar should be viewed with strong skepticism.»
I get this principle from Males's work in the late 20th c. on "The Scapegoat Generation" and "Framing Youth," and his observation that claims of various failings and social pathologies among older US teenagers seemed very much like earlier accusations — sometimes backed with impressive-sounding science — against Blacks, women, Jews, immigrants, and other groups being economically and politically held back by being (mostly figuratively) held down.
Similarly, when we have another crisis epidemic of drug use, keep in mind the last several and ask for really strong evidence that we don't have just problems — and problems best handled as a public health issue, and a public health issue perhaps best seen as just another incarnation of America's drug habits and the US as a drug culture: where you can buy hard, addictive drugs in your local Krogers (check out the liquor sections and cigarettes), and where you are surrounded by ads that promise near-magic improvements in your life if you just take the right pills or drink the right booze (and, soon, smoke a sufficiently fashionable name-brand weed).
With any pain-killer, you're going to get some addiction and a fair amount of abuse; and drug use, like pretty much all things human, is subject to The Iron Law of Fashion about which the Powers That Be usually can't do a whole lot (but will take credit when fashions change: during the longer or, often, shorter period between one crisis and the next). So I'm sure there are problems and serious problems with opioids. 
I want to see serious statistics, though, and serious policies not only dealing with abuse of a pain-killer (more exactly: pain-ameliorator) but also for reducing people's pain. So before you come to get my Tramadol — I can't take NSAIDs any more if I want my kidneys to keep working — I want some stats on social pathologies for opioids per 100,000 population and with careful definition of those pathologies. 
To twist a partial quotation from Karl Marx, «Opiates and opioids are the opium of today's suffering people" and the pharmalogicals are probably less dangerous than fanatical enthusiasms in religion and/or politics. All things considered, opium might've been a fairly sensible choice among the wretched of the Earth in Marx's time — opium reduces pain and hunger — and so might an addiction leading to a fairly quick death. 
We need to hear solid, honest, disinterested statistics and analysis of the current US opioid problem, plus some suggestions for reducing sociological and economic pain, making it less pressing for people to use painkillers.
When US troops came home from Vietnam, Americans felt threatened by a HEROIN EPIDEMIC!!! from the return of hordes of heroin addicts. It didn't happen. Military users were dried out in 'Nam and sent home. Those who returned to a decent life, left their pain in Vietnam, the way most people recovering from surgery leave their pain and heavy narcotics in the hospital. Those who returned to pain and available and relatively cheap heroin, often returned to heroin. 
The situation will be similar with opioids, except I don't think American politics will allow us to even think about reduction of harm from reduction of social and economic pain. Minimally, though, let's apply Sagan's Law and Mike Males's Caution: don't panic, be skeptical, and demand rigorous analysis and compassionate policy.