Bill would lower legal age required to get tattoo
South Carolina lawmakers have agreed to lower the legal age required to get a tattoo without parental consent from 21 to 18. Now, it’s up to Gov. Mark Sanford to decide whether to sign the bill into law. South Carolina is currently the only state in the nation that requires someone to be 21 to get a tattoo.
Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, sponsored the bill because he thinks the current law is unconstitutional since it doesn’t treat all adults equally. Someone is considered an adult at 18 and can sign contracts, vote and join the military, everything except drink alcohol, so he thinks they should be able to get a tattoo.
Greenville native Laura Brown got a tattoo when she was 18 and doesn’t regret it.
“Right after I graduated from high school, we were on a senior trip and, since we couldn’t do it in South Carolina, we stopped in Alabama and we were on our way to a cruise so we just stopped at a tattoo shop and just did it,“ she says.
Frank McKenzie, owner of Body Rites Tattoos in Columbia’s Five Points area, says USC students come in just about every week wanting to get a tattoo, but he has to turn them away if they’re not 21.
“They’re getting them in people’s houses or they’re taking their money to Georgia or North Carolina, where it is 18,“ he says. He also got his first tattoo when he was 18.
But Rep. Liston Barfield, R-Conway, was one of 37 who voted against the bill when it came up in the state House of Representatives last week. Even though people are considered adults at 18, he doesn’t think people that young should make a decision as permanent as a tattoo.
“I think if you go back and talk to a lot of people who had those tattoos, if they could take ‘em off they would,“ he says.
Rep. Lanny Littlejohn, R-Spartanburg, disagrees. “If they’re responsible to go out and shoot somebody in a war, I think they’re responsible to have a tattoo,“ he says.
A spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford says the bill is on his desk and it’s being studied carefully, but he did not give any indication whether the governor intended to sign the bill into law.
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