South Carolina Statehouse Blog

The argument about who has the right to possess a gun has been going on since the creation of the second amendment. An especially hot topic in recent years has been handgun possession and in particular the issue of what should be the legal age of possession. For the citizens of South Carolina, a consensus seems to have been reached.

Last week, Governor Mark Sanford signed House Bill 4364 (now R.219) into law which clarifies at what age one can possess a handgun in South Carolina. The bill, simply put, lowers the age one can possess a handgun from 21 years old to 18.

Representative Michael Pitts from Laurens was one of the main sponsors of this bill and agreed to talk to me a little more about what all this bill entailed.

Representative Pitts started off by explaining why this bill was needed in the first place. He explained that South Carolina has a couple major gun manufacturing plants which are staffed by a lot of people between the ages of 18-21. Before this bill was passed, handgun possession in South Carolina was limited to those 21 and older. This wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that South Carolina’s definition of handgun “possession” was very ambiguous. Without any set standard, the current interpretation of “possession” meant that those working in a gun factory were actually in “possession” of handguns even if they just handled paperwork. If left unresolved, this would have resulted in these businesses having to fire a lot of their staff because they were under the legal age of possession.

In order to clearly define possession, H.4364 was proposed in the House. However, the bill originally proposed in the House wasn’t the one that ended up on the governor’s desk. Before it got to the governor’s desk, the Senate made some changes to it.

“The original bill defined more clearly what possession of a handgun meant by a person 18 to 21 years of age for the purpose of sales,” Representative Pitts explained. “When it got to the Senate, Senator Hutto gave the argument…that in the state of South Carolina, we consider you an adult at the age of 18.”

Therefore, while the bill was in the Senate Judiciary Committee, it was simplified to allow anyone above the age of 18 the right to possess a handgun.

“What Senator Hutto’s [bill] did was gave a person over 18 [and] under 21 the ability not to just possess while working in sales, but to possess period.”

When Representative Pitts saw these changes, he fully supported them.

“If you can bear arms for this country at the age of 18 without signature from your parents, you should be able to own a gun also.”

However, this doesn’t mean that an 18 year old can just walk into a handgun dealer’s store and buy one.

“The bill in and of itself would allow the purchase of a handgun,” Pitts said, “but when you take into account all of the laws, federal, state, and everything else, federal law restricts the sale of handguns to an 18 year old.”

What this means is that those between the ages of 18 and 21 are still not allowed to purchase handguns from dealers even though they are allowed to possess one.

To put this new law into context, Representative Pitts gave me an example of where this law could be seen in action.

“If my daughter were driving, as a 19 or 20 year old, to Charleston for the weekend,” Pitts explained, “I could put my handgun in the glove compartment of my car and she could drive to Charleston without being a felon if she were stopped.”

One of the surprising things about this bill is that the media didn’t discover it until after the governor had practically signed it. I asked Representative Pitts why he thought this happened.

“Because they were so focused…on the Freedom of Information on Concealed Weapon’s permits, they became tunnel visioned and lost track of the big picture”

“Now, if they missed a bill that could create as much controversy as [it] did once they found out about it,” Pitts continued, “what else did they miss as they were so focussed in on me?”

Representative Pitts also noted that a lot of South Carolina’s media missed the fact that lowering the age of possession to 18 actually aligns itself with Federal Law (18 USC 922(b), (x)). In fact, South Carolina was the last of the southern states to lower the possession age to 18. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that there are some western states that have laws that allow persons younger than 18 to possess handguns. One such state is Montana which allows 14 year olds to posses a handgun.

In order to wrap up the interview, Pitts left me with these two question:

“Are South Carolina’s kids less intelligent, less mature, or less responsible than the kids in the rest of the southern states? Are the southern kids as a group more untrustworthy and irresponsible than the kids in the western states?”