18

I received my HS diploma on my birthday

 

Congratulations. Go forth and buy a lottery ticket, and may you at least win the price of the ticket back.

(That's what I did on my 18th.)

 

Happy birthday bro

 

Congratulations mate ! :drinkers: Now you can have your first legal pint or at least you could if you lived in the UK. What's the age for drinking in the states?

Yakumo

 

:smt043

Actually no, it's 'Aiiii-Raak.''

 

Eye-rakk.

And 21 is the drinking age here, although the way some of my peers behave, I'm sometimes led to believe that isn't old enough.

 

I'd have to agree with you. I don't understand what's fun about waking up with a headache and an upset stomach.

 

Well if you're sick the next day you can be sure you had quite the amount of fun the previous night! It's the way the (alcoholic) world balances the fun...ness... or something.

 

Frankly I think 21 for drinking is stupid when it's 16 for driving and 18 for buying this:


Of course drinking huge amounts of alcohol (like I did saturday :smt009 ) is not advisable, but having a glass of wine with a nice Italian dish or drinking a beer with friends never hurt anyone. In most European countries, it's 18 for drinking; and the vast majority of drunkards is old anyway.

But anyway, a happy birthday to you! :smt045

 

What's really freaky is that to wish me a happy birthday the government sent me my selective service form to fill out and timed it so that it would arrive on my birthday. :-(

 

I filled mine out when I was 17. It wasn't processed until January, 2 months after my B-day.

 

Yes, especially since so many of us go out any buy something like that on out 18th birthday anyways. :smt083 (BTW, I'm not sure that thing would be legal for normal civilian use - looks a bit too military to me, but then again, I'm no gun expert.)

Then again, an exponentially higher amount of people die each year - even here in the gun-happy US - from alcohol deaths than firearms-related incidents (with tobacco actually being more deadly than alcohol.) Add into it that there doesn't nessicarily need to be a body for alcohol to have ruined the lives of an individual or a family, and I'd say the current policy as it stands here works just fine.

 

looks automatic to me. And you have to pay out the ass to get a permit for them, too.

 

Well, from what I've heard the civilian version is legal. It's not automatic, but it is .50BMG and the USMC uses it against lightly armoured vehicles and the like. It costs $8000 though.

But regardless, just as firearms are not harmful when being used by a responsible person, and cars being equally safe when driven sensibly, so is there nothing wrong with sensible use of alcohol, I think. Though the major fallacy in, not only your, policy on alcohol restriction is that if you're under the drinking age you're not allowed to buy/drink it, but as soon as you hit 21 you can drink yourself to death.

 

I don't think you can get ahold of guns until you're at least 21. (Unless you live in the rural south.)

 

Might've changed then, but back when I was on the ofp1985.com boards (where it was quite full of gun folk) it was 21 for handguns and 18 for rifles. I might just as well be wrong though, and I agree that kind of weakens my whole point.