Is it high time to reduce the drinking age to 18 nationwide?

Tennessee law professor and Instapunditer Glenn Harlan Reynolds thinks so. Writing in Wednesday's WSJ, he throws his support behind an Alaska State Representative's efforts to establish a drinking age of 18 for active-duty service members. The rationale is straightforward: "If you get shot at, you can have a shot."

Thing is, such a move would arguably run afoul of a federal law passed in 1984 that makes contingent federal-to-state highway funding on states keeping their drinking age at 21.

So Reynolds advocates Congress repealing the law, called the Federal Uniform Drinking Age Act. He writes:

The counter-argument, Reynolds notes, mostly concerns safety.