I had to renew my Driver’s License, so I applied for a REAL ID.
There’s no written test for those over 70, so all I had to pass was the vision test, which I did.
Now with a REAL ID driver’s license I can buy ammunition in CA and fly on airliners.
I’m cleaning my .22 to celebrate.
My DL’s still good for one more year. In the meantime, my passport will suffice.
They give you free ammunition with your Real ID in NV😀
Find me a realtor 
Thought it was said it was mandatory in 25 that You had to have the real ID?
Ones still active are fine. But after it expires, then we’ll need the new one
You will need a Real ID, a Passport/Passport Card or similar qualified ID to fly at some point this year. I believe some States only have the option of real ID drivers licenses but other States are giving people the option of choosing Real ID or what I guess the government is now considering to be old fashioned fake IDs.
This whole Real ID thing just makes me think of the “Papers Please” lines in all the movies based in countries with authoritarian governments.
Or, one of several acceptable alternative REAL IDs, a Passport Book / Card, and a Military ID are acceptable alternative REAL IDs.
Check the DHS and TSA websites for a more comprehensive list.
Most people don’t have a Passport or Military ID.
So, REAL ID DL from your state DMV is usually the only available, and affordable REAL ID alternative for most citizens.
That is why they say it’s the minimum mandatory one.
But, there are several alternatives that are acceptable if you are qualified / can afford them.
But, know that the REAL ID standards are the same document proofs with or without cost increase, or having to join the military.
All can be used with TSA to board a domestic flight.
The Passport gives you the option of international travel, and the military ID gives you the ability to enter Military bases, and facilities that may not allow civilians even with a REAL ID DL only;
depending on their Force Protection alert status level, or other restrictions at the time you wish to visit.
I hold all of them, and I am not authorized access to many other restricted areas that even active duty personnel are not allowed in unless they are assigned within one of those areas, and then only that one, not any other that they are not assigned / authorized to enter.
In the military you don’t try to go where you are “off limits.”
Like not carrying into a gun free zone even if you hold a CCW permit/license whatever your issuing authority calls that, if not allowed in yours, or another state, or federal jurisdiction.
Nice that you hold that item, but it too is not all inclusive. Like an actual LEO on duty could go into.
Like your standard DL does not authorize you to operate what a CDL w/ endorsement(s) is required to operate.
How sad that what started out as documentation that the holder possessed the minimum skills necessary to operate a motor vehicle has morphed into a national permission slip for airline travel, along with a warrantless search of your person by government agents.
The (WHTI) Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was enacted 25-years ago (it’s been repeatedly postponed until now) to counteract terrorists obtaining driver licenses / IDs fraudulently to facilitate their boarding four jet airlines that they highjacked on 9/11/2001 to use as Kamikaze suicide-murder jet fuel bombs to fly into their preselected targets like the World Trade Center’s twin towers, and the Pentagon for example. And, that one that ditched in Pennsylvania that was thought to be targeting the White House.
So, instead of just getting the old standard DL to get on a domestic flight now you must produce umpteen document proofs to get a REAL ID DL to pass TSA security checkpoints to board a flight.
Yeah, that changed us forever.
But, with recent / current events of terrorist attacks there is no apparent letup of those who intentionally kill innocent people to make their political points, trying to change things by intimidation, and coercion under threat of more violence.
Do we really want to kowtow to that?
Can we afford to forget the past, and just hope that they won’t do it again.
Unfortunately, I don’t think so.
And how hard is it for criminals/terrorists to get an ID – DL or passport? And how does the presentation of an ID to a TSA agent prevent any terrorist act? For example, the recent spate of crashing cars into crowds. If only the perps were required to show an ID. That would have prevented the killings. Or, so the government “we’re experts who are keeping you safe” logic goes. The ID requirement has nothing to do with security, in my opinion, but just a means of subjugating the governed,
We’ve been here before, as well. For example, with the Chinese Exclusion Act of the late 1800s, came a requirement that anyone of Chinese ancestry apply for and carry a picture ID. The official government explanation for that racist requirement was: (1) the Chinese are not really US citizens as they owe allegiance to the Chinese Emperor; and (2) the Chinese look alike, so a photo ID is necessary to allow law enforcement and immigration authorities to tell them apart.
When I’m not traveling, my passport is in my go bag but that’s another story. In 2007, the TSA ruled that in order to access certain areas like seaports you would have to show a special ID called a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, (TWIC). I had to get one to do my job.
After a day milling around filling a couple of fairly innocuous forms at a temporary government office manned by pre DEI era candidates, cards were issued. The next time I got to the gate where the guard usually waved me through I showed him my shiny new laminated TWIC card. He looked at me as if I’d grown horns. In true gooberming fashion the memo had not made its way to the people most affected by it. TSA at the airports are just beggining to accept it but it’s spotty. Rememer, TSA is the agency that invented them.
It appears that my old pitifully un-enhanced stoopid DL was replaced automatically with a smart DL. I just looked for the star in the top right corner and it’s there. I’m thrilled to be considered worthy of yet another piece of ID but I have a concern. The last time I was at the immigration center in downtown LA, illegal aliens on the sidewalk were hawking driver’s licenses for 50 bucks.
Question: do the State DMV’s access the NCIC database or is it another shiny bauble to make the sheep feel safe? Are counterfeiters already making them? The invasion hordes fly with some kind of Mickey Mouse Biden free pass. Do you feel safe because you have a gold star on your DL. Isn’t what they do in kindergarten, give you a gold star for good behavior? I’m not paranoid, I’m just careful.
“Won’t you let us implant you with this teeny weeny little chip so that way we can make sure you’re always safe?”
I have to admit I felt a warm glow come over my whole body as I saw the gold star
I would be nice if REAL ID were required to vote in CA, ever since the motor voter thing happened. the Feds don’t trust the DMV’s old license as proof of anything. Just sayin’
Minimization of threat risk is never total irradication of it.
Where there is a will there is a way, bribery, threats to harm a loved one. Blackmail. Look what they did to Biden and what that got them.
Especially, state sponsored, or bankrolled by a sociopathic billionaire.
These are clever, persistent bastards who fixate, and obsess on doing harm to others in the name of their fanatical cause.
And, we are not up to their game level often under estimating, or disregarding them especially with short term memory, or motivation loss.
But, they never quite, they are never satisfied, they just, go back to their drawing board, and start plotting their next diabolical attack, for years even decades away.
And, when we can only yawn at the crickets of inactivity, and get lackadaisical, they make their next big strike.
In the meantime it’s taken a quarter of a century since the WHTI was enacted, and we still are only about to implement it.
With a country full of millions of “got aways” including some on the terrorist watch list that should never have been allowed in as inadmissible.
A gift of the Biden Administration that will likely bite us in our asses for decades possibly.
I don’t mind having multiple REAL IDs proving my citizenship. Their badges of honor to me.
.
In Massachusetts with the real ID they ask you to turn in one of your firearms…….
That sounds unconventional to me!
…so you can buy two?
Way to go! 
Ha! TSA = Thousands Standing Around.
The ID requirement at airports is absurd. You stand in the security line until called by the TSA agent to whom you hand your boarding pass and ID. The security “expert” looks at your ID to check whether the name on your ID matches the name on the boarding pass.
Why? 'Cause security experts consulted by government and paid with printed money would tell you that terrorists could never have an ID that matched their boarding pass. So, implement a real ID program to deal with the threat,
Keepin’ you safe. We’re here from government to help.
The most annoying thing about TSA when I was working was they wouldn’t allow our US Marshals, armed with their credentials, duty weapons, and badges or CBP officers likewise armed and with credentials and in full uniform with badges, cut through their little patch of sacred ground on our way to perform our jobs. They evidently thought we presented some kind of danger instead of a force multiplier. Minimum wage DEI at its finest.