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Comment by ipnon | Hacker News Reader

We need one age when a child becomes a an adult. Otherwise we end up with college juniors who can't drink a beer and highschool freshman who receive capital sentences. In both circumstances it seems that the rights of the young were curtailed for the benefit of the old.

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Does that include normalising the minimum age allowed for a US President? (Currently 35 years old)

I don’t believe in a one age fits all laws approach. Where I’m from, most things switch to adult at 18 - including drinking, voting, enlisting. Murder/criminal convictions are possible before that.

I don’t think a killer should go free just because they were were 10 years old when they abducted, tortured, mutilated and killed a toddler. And then went on to become a pedophile.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger

The President is an odd scenario in relation to other heads of state, however William Pitt the Younger was only 24 when he was Premier of the British Empire at one of its highest points. While the age requirement for the Presidency has been observed, that hasn't always been the case with senators (30) or representatives (25). The youngest senator in American history (John Eaton) was inducted at the age of 28, and the youngest representative (William Charles Cole Claiborne) at the age of 21.

I've seen a lot of discussions that tend to go with 25 as the age of maturity, based on studies of brain development. It seems to me that the ages for things (weapons, voting, marriage, joining the military, drugs [alcohol, cigarettes, etc], entering a strip club, being charged as an adult, and so on) have been determined/changed over time separately, and there are exceptions to each rule as well as different standards in different parts of the world. I agree that 25 is a good standard generally for many things- although I also think a very important discussion needs to be had about the subject.

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