Thread: Legal Age

The thing that kills me with the whole legal age argument, atleast here in the US, is the hypocracy. To exercise a freedom, the government says you need to be a certain age because you dont have the reasoning capabilities to make rational decisions until that age, but as soon as a kid makes a terribly wrong decision, with those same un-matured reasoning capabilities, they become an adult in the eyes of the law, and get tried as an adult. As I see it, if your too young to make "adult" decisions, you dont become an adult just because you have made an "adult" choice, since if we use that reasoning with everything else, a kid would become an adult because they chose to smoke, or drink. If we are going to allow actions to determine when our adulthood begins, we should allow our actions to determine when that age is, across the board.

The problem with government regulation is the one size fits all approach, there are probably as many people that are mature enough to drink at 14, as there are 50 year olds that still arent mature enough.

Originally Posted by Jasongreat

...To exercise a freedom, the government says you need to be a certain age because you dont have the reasoning capabilities to make rational decisions until that age, but as soon as a kid makes a terribly wrong decision, with those same un-matured reasoning capabilities, they become an adult in the eyes of the law, and get tried as an adult. ...

There's a hot button issue.

The trouble with the judicial system is that it is supposed to be rational and reasoned in it's approach to justice, retribution, and rehabilitation, yet by the very nature of many crimes, the emotional response will almost always overwhelm the rational response. Prosecuters and defense attorneys alike will always make an emotional case in order to sway a jury.