[See an update to this post here.]
Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that declared abortion to be legal in the U.S. It was also the day of the latest school shooting, this one a slightly-less-headline-grabbing version than the last. And as I listened to the usual parade of opinions on abortion (which pretty much haven’t changed at all since Roe), and waited for the NRA’s latest asinine statement on how guns are the solution to all our problems, a thought occurred to me:
Gun-rights advocates and abortion-rights advocates aren’t all that different.
The gun nut is just the abortion nut dressed up as a redneck. The abortion nut is just a gun nut drenched in estrogen. I imagine that thought will offend nearly everyone (WOO-HOO! TRAFFIC!), but before you stomp away angry, let me explain what I mean:
1. Both demand the right to kill people who are inconveniences to them.
This, of course, is the crux of the argument. Both gun rights advocates and abortion rights advocates are convinced that there is an appropriate time to take a human life, and that time is when the existence of that particular human makes their lives harder. For the gun nuts, that time is when the human life in question threatens theirs, or takes their stuff, or trespasses on their property, or threatens their gun rights, or votes for a black guy. For abortion nuts, it’s when it might force them to put their life on hold, or has a debilitating disease, or has the wrong genitalia, or has a loser for a father.
I know that both groups are going to come back with “But they’re criminal scum and don’t deserve to live!” and/or “But they’re pre-human life with no meaningful right to existence!” but both of these miss the point, which is that both philosophies are possessed by the delusional idea that we can somehow kill our way to a better world. The gun advocate thinks that the safest world is the one where citizens can execute criminals without a judge or a jury; the abortion advocate thinks we can end poverty (and child abuse, and a host of other things) by pre-murdering poor and unwanted children.
(Interestingly, both can point to statistics to support their arguments, if they want. Even more interestingly, neither one will accept the other’s statistical arguments. Think about that for a second. I’m just sayin’.)
It’s true that fewer people mourn when a criminal or a fetus dies; there’s certainly no denying that. The question, though, I suppose, is why the death needs to happen at all — or, at the very least, why we as a society should condone it. I imagine most liberals can see the hole in the gun advocate’s argument: there are all sorts of other ways to defend yourself, your family, and your property that don’t involve lethal force. (So many, in fact, that it kind of boggles the mind.) What they’re missing, of course, and what the conservative will gladly point out for them, is that there are just as many ways to deal with the problem of unwanted children that don’t involve killing them. (Again, so many that it would take all day just to list them.)
2. Both rely on rather ambiguous parts of the Constitution to defend their “right.”
I’m not the first to point it out, but gun rights advocates love the second half of the Second Amendment, and are more than happy to ignore the first half. In case you’re fuzzy on your Constitution, let me reproduce it for you here:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
They’ll yell till they’re blue in the face about the part about the right to keep and bear arms not being infringed, but their eyes glaze over when you point out that the amendment clearly specifies a single purpose for the right to keep and bear arms, and that purpose has been essentially meaningless for about a century now. There is no militia to speak of, and certainly no well-regulated one. Furthermore, if there was one, it wouldn’t mean much for the security of the free state, seeing as our enemies (and our government) have tanks, nuclear weapons, and a host of other things that laugh in the face of semi-automatic firearms.
Advocates for abortion rights are on even shakier ground here (sorry, liberal friends), relying on a nebulous “right to privacy” that literally appears nowhere in the Constitution. Even the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Roe v. Wade essentially amounts to, “It’s either in the Ninth Amendment, or the Fourteenth, we’re pretty sure. If you squint, you’ll see it. Promise.”
Do these rights exist? I dunno. Definitely not in the Constitution. But if you really have to ask that question, you’re still missing the point: When does a human being ever have the “right” to kill another?
3. Both ultimately resort to arguments that amount to “If it were illegal, people would do it anyway.”
I think everyone knows what I’m talking about here. Gun nuts like to trot out the old saying that “If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will own guns.” Abortion advocates like to point to statistics that show abortion laws seem to have little to no effect on abortion rates. Again, this is a point where each group is likely to recognize the other’s fallacy (because they come from opposite ends of the political spectrum), but are blind to it when they make it themselves.
The fallacy, of course, rests on the assumption that we as a society pass laws against actions because we think the laws themselves will somehow keep people from engaging in them. I shouldn’t have to point out that this is nonsense, but apparently I do. Laws against murder have never prevented murder. Laws against theft have never prevented theft. They’re on the books so that when murder and theft happen, we can prosecute them.
It’s such an obvious fallacy that it seems idiotic that I should even need to point it out. And yet, it gets repeated every day. Probably because it’s catchy, and because…
4. Both groups are ultimately just merchants of death.
There’s no way around it. If you celebrate gun rights, or abortion rights, you’re ultimately celebrating death. You’re ultimately saying that, in certain circumstances, it’s somehow a “good thing” when a human life is ended. You’re saying that there are beating hearts that can and should be stopped.
The vast majority of people will tell you, if you ask them, that they believe in protecting human life. If you consider yourself one of those people — and odds are you do — I humbly ask you to think long and hard about why you believe in protecting human life, and why you’re against protecting certain human lives. I humbly submit that if you believe strongly in the agenda of the NRA or the pro-choice lobby, you’ve been sold a bill of goods. A bill of goods that exists to sell products and win elections, not to protect life’s sanctity. Furthermore, I’d submit that you’ve been sold the same bill of goods as the other side. Because ultimately, that bill of goods is nothing but death.
The only difference is the marketing demographic.
Thanks for making me think Luke. Appreciate your thoughts.
Absolutely. Thanks for reading, friend.
In regards to the Constitution: Technically, it’s not nebulous so much as it is penumbral (or the emanation of a penumbra) as first stated in Griswold v. Connecticut (re: married women and contraception). While I think that the holding of Griswold was correct, the Court made some really interesting legal acrobatics to get there, namely the right to privacy. While I think that we do need a right to privacy (especially in this time of history), they should have deferred to the correct branches to amend the Constitution to do so. Again with the guns in Heller v. DC, the Court held that what the Constitution *really* meant when it said “militia” was “individuals.” And we got all of this because of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison, way back in 1803. Damn those dudes in powdered wigs.
Just as a side note: There is one difference that I think merits some contemplation. Mainly, that when speaking about abortion and the women who go through with them there is generally not a sense of glee about the situation. It is more of a “well I guess she did what she had to do” sort of weariness to it. Whereas, whenever there is a news story about a person who has killed/injured an intruder, there is a gleeful tone of vigilante-ism. This disturbs me.
I appreciate your thoughts, Abby. It’s nice to have the comments of someone who has actually studied Constitutional law.
While I do my best to read the actual court decisions I’m writing about, I lack the time to really plumb them and the legal training to understand them as well as I would like to. So thanks.
I do agree that the gun rights crowd — or at least its more extreme bits — can be weirdly gleeful about killing in a way that the pro-choice crowd often isn’t. (Perhaps it’s part of the pathological need to out-conservative everyone else that’s been part and parcel of the American Right since at least the Bush years?) But while they’re rarer, there are certainly strains of thought coming from the Left that amount “Attagirl, way to exercise your right to choose” (see, for example, I’m Not Sorry) — which isn’t quite the same thing, but amounts in some ways to a comparable sentiment.
Luke, I wasn’t criticizing your terminology; more commenting on the ridiculous phrases that lawyers come up with when trying to out-smart one another. I should have added one of those eye-rolling emoticons after that first sentence. (Wait, do those still exist? Or am I remember AIM?)
Hmm, I dunno. Sometimes if you type a face with an “8″ for eyes, it’ll turn it into an eye-rolling face — but sometimes it turns it into a glasses-wearing face instead. Let me try a few:
8-(
8-\
8-/
One pair of glasses and three nothings. Darn.
What are all of these different ways of dealing with unwanted children that you speak of? And while we’re at it, how many ways are there for a woman deal with an unwanted pregnancy–not the child that will result from it but the pregnancy itself?
If the pro-life movement cares so much about the sanctity of life and believes that the death of an embryo is equal to the death of someone who has been born, then why don’t they spend any of their time or money on research to prevent miscarriages? Why don’t they spend any of their time or money on finding ways to prevent roughly half of all fertilized eggs from being naturally flushed out of a woman’s body before it even has a chance to implant in the uterus? I mean, if the sanctity of human life begins at conception, there is a massacre going on in a woman’s uterus on a fairly regular basis. Furthermore, why don’t they spend any of their time or money on providing better prenatal care and education or better educating women on how to use/obtain birth control? Or even providing private funding for low-income women who can’t afford birth control or providing funding and services to support women after they give birth?
If sanctity and protection of human life is the goal of the pro-life movement, then why do they choose to spend virtually all of their time and money shaming and demonizing women for claiming autonomy over their own body? I think pro-lifers are the ones who have been sold a false bill of goods, my friend.
Additionally in regards to abortion, maybe the question isn’t “when does a human being have the right to kill another” but rather “when does a human being have the right to use another human beings body without their consent?”
You really can’t think of a single way to prevent or deal with unwanted pregnancy other than abortion, Ryssa? I mean, heck, even Planned Parenthood likes to tell people that abortions amount to only 2% of what they do. What do you think they’re doing with the other 98% of that funding, exactly? Burning effigies of Sarah Palin?
I’m quite familiar with the rest of your talking points here, but surely you realize that it all just amounts to a an ad hominem argument. Even if every single pro-life individual is a worthless troglodyte who pathologically hates sexually empowered women, that has nothing to do with whether they’re right or wrong on the abortion issue. Bill Clinton was a misogynist too, but his economic policies seemed to work pretty okay.
No, I can’t. How else do you not be pregnant anymore once you are already pregnant, aside from inducing a miscarriage or perhaps praying that you have one naturally? There are some steps you can take to attempt to prevent pregnancy, such as birth control, but sometimes–even when used perfectly–birth control fails. You can try abstinence, but unfortunately rape is a thing. Then what? Too bad, so sad?
And no, I don’t think what I said was an ad hominem attack on the pro-life movement. If I had said that pro-lifers are poopy-heads therefore they are wrong, that would be an ad hominem attack. There is always a handful of exceptions, but on the whole–as a former member of the pro-life movement myself–i think my description checks out. The only significant exceptions to my description that I can think of are Crisis Pregnancy Centers–in that they sometimes offer emotional and financial support to women with unwanted pregnancies–but those places are really well-known for using lies, disinformation and manipulation in their attempts to help women. But yeah, I do think it speaks volumes if even these people who are so incredibly passionate about “pre-born” life can’t even feel arsed to try to I dunno…prevent miscarriages which would save that pre-born life. It’s incredibly suspicious and disingenuous and I think it says a lot about what they are really concerned about.
Okay, sure. If you’re already pregnant and you absolutely, positively have to stop being pregnant right now, abortion’s your only option. Just like if you’ve currently got a gun to your head and you want to keep on living, you better hope you have a gun in your pocket and you’re a quick draw. I think it should be obvious that’s not what I’m talking about.
What you’re referring to are the “difficult cases,” and as the saying goes, “Difficult cases make for bad legislation.” (That’s a saying, right? I think I heard someone say it once or twice.) I am not saying, “If you are raped, I want you to be totally screwed” [sorry, poor choice of words] any more than I’m saying “If a murderer breaks into your house, I want you to be totally screwed.” What I am saying is, how can we, as a society, in the big picture, promote life instead of death? Political tug-of-war between extremists is entirely unhelpful, and my intent here was to shine a light on the holes in the thinking on both ends of the spectrum by getting the two “sides” to view their own fallacies in light of the other’s. If I’ve failed at that, I’ll take the blame. I’ll be the first to admit that this is far from the best thing I’ve ever written.
Your understanding of the ad hominem fallacy, though, strikes me as alarmingly narrow. Appealing to simple insults is certainly an example of ad hominem, but that’s not the full extent of it. Let me put it this way: you’re trying to discredit the pro-life movement by interpreting its agenda as misogynist, but abortion boils down to a single question: Is the practice of abortion a positive or negative or negative thing for society? The answer to that question has nothing at all to do with whether pro-lifers are woman-haters or hypocrites. Even if you could prove that all pro-lifers are misogynists, it wouldn’t follow logically that the pro-life position is an inherently misogynist position.
With regard to preventing miscarriages, is there even anything that can be done to prevent miscarriages that isn’t being done already? That’s what prenatal care is for, isn’t it? Now, if you want to talk about how most pro-lifers are hypocrites because they oppose universal healthcare and therefore access to prenatal care, that’s a conversation we could have. We’d probably be in full agreement, though, so it wouldn’t be a particularly interesting conversation.
A well-crafted and interesting article, Luke. There’s a lot of things I have the urge to say, both in response to the article and to the comments, but I think It’d be best if I hone in on this part. I noticed you said
“Gun nuts like to trot out the old saying that “If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will own guns.” … The fallacy rests on the assumption that we as a society pass laws against actions because we think the laws themselves will somehow keep people from engaging in them. I shouldn’t have to point out that this is nonsense… Laws against murder have never prevented murder. Laws against theft have never prevented theft.”
It doesn’t seem like I should have to point out that there is nothing morally wrong with owning a gun. There is also nothing harmful to society in owning a gun. It does me no harm at all for my neighbor to have a rifle hanging in his garage. I’m glad to know there are people in my neighborhood who are good people, and responsible, who own guns an know how to use one. Guns are nothing more than tools. Yes, they’ve been used to kill, but they’ve also been used to save lives. And their very presence is better crime prevention than anything the police can do.
The fact is, laws against murder HAVE prevented quite a few murders. Theft, same story. And yeah, laws against gun ownership probably would significantly reduce the number of people who own guns. That’s why they are a bad idea. They would put all the power in the hands of a few people. The Framers strove to avoid this, be those people criminals or the government. Mass murders always happen in gun-free zones.
Also, it seems like you learned most of what you know about gun-rights advocates from reading gun magazines, which is not a good way to do it. There’s no end to the paranoid idiocy in gun mags, because, yeah, they’re selling a product. FYI, there are plenty of people who know that guns can’t fix everything, but still know that outlawing guns will fix nothing.
As I say below, my primary purpose in writing this was not to argue for a gun ban, but I’d like to call your bluff on a couple of things:
Can you cite any examples of murder and theft laws actually preventing murders and thefts? Without doing any rigorous research into it, the general rule seems to be that the criminal sort rarely if ever really considers the possibility that they might get caught.
Do you have any evidence that “Mass murders always happen in gun-free zones”? The shooting yesterday failed to claim any lives, but it hardly happened in a gun-free zone, and it wasn’t stopped by a citizen with a gun, either.
I’m not offended, but neither am I persuaded. I always look forward to your posts because I find them thoughtful and fair even if I do not always agree. This one, however, is more emotive than thoughtful, and I do not believe that you have thought the issues through in any depth. The similarities between gun-rights advocates and abortion-rights advocates are superficial, but the differences are profound.
If I had the time, I could rebut your post point-by-point. But I will content myself with only one of your points that I find to be lacking. You write:
the amendment clearly specifies a single purpose for the right to keep and bear arms, and that purpose has been essentially meaningless for about a century now.
and you assert that gun-rights advocates typically ignore the militia clause. But you misunderstand what the militia clause is all about.
What, in the historical context, exactly is a militia? A militia is an ad-hoc collection of irregular soldiers, which trains together sporadically and is called into action only when a specific need arises. It is larger, more formal, and of greater duration than a sheriff’s posse, but far less formal and more temporary than a standing army. Each soldier in a militia unit must provide his own arms, and is expected to be proficient in their use. And that soldier’s personal armament is not expected to be used only in the service of the militia; to the contrary, most of the time a man’s personal firearms are for his personal use, for hunting and the defense of himself and his family. What the framers of the second amendment envisaged was that without the widespread ownership of personal arms, it would be impossible to raise a militia of citizen-soldiers at need.
And what was the need — according to the framers — for which a militia might likely be raised? “The security of a free state.” And the first and foremost danger that a “free state” needed to be secure from was the danger of tyranny, whether from a domestic or a foreign threat. Such a threat would make the “free state” no longer free. Lest you think the framers’ fear that a free state’s freedom could be lost was groundless, or that the militia would be inadequate to defend the state’s freedom, remember that our country had just fought an eight-year revolution, largely with militia troops who all brought their own personal weapons into combat. If the free citizens of the thirteen colonies had not been able to “keep and bear arms” then they never could have struck the blow for freedom at Lexington and Concord.
Such is the historical context of the militia clause: the framers believed that it was necessary to safeguard the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms in order that they might be ready to defend their freedom and the freedom of their country. And once you understand the militia clause in this way, if you still think that that purpose has been essentially meaningless for about a century now then you are being dangerously naive.
The militia clause does not limit the scope of the second amendment in any way. Instead it gives the rationale for the amendment and underscores its importance. It strengthens, rather than weakens, the central assertion of the amendment, that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
I reluctantly agree that this post is, as you say, somewhat superficial. I sacrificed some depth to get it posted while it still felt slightly relevant, and my intent was to attack rhetoric more than ideas. I’m aware of the weakness of the approach, but it seemed worthwhile at the time.
Let me first say that I don’t exactly hold the American Revolution in the same awe that many do. It’s eventual outcome was arguably more bad than good, but ultimately it was fought for rather petty reasons (the price of tea? really?), and (more importantly) I see it as a direct violation of St. Paul’s command to “be subject to governing authorities” in Romans 13. The upshot is that while I don’t necessarily regret it, I don’t exactly regard it as a moral exemplary, either. If that makes me unpopular, so be it, I suppose.
Having said that, let me go after your definition of “militia” for a moment. You appear to be arguing that any community in which people own guns constitutes a militia. I guess that’s true from a certain perspective, but if that’s what we take the Second Amendment to mean, isn’t it really just saying, “People should own guns so that people own guns”? I’m aware that the (as Abby points out above) the case law tends to agree with you there, but if I concede the point, it still leaves unanswered the question of why the framers felt the need to specify that the militia be “well regulated.” If our “militia” is the collective of people who own guns, in what sense is it “well regulated”? Furthermore, what standard should we use to determine whether it’s regulated well?
Now you’re thinking and writing more like the Luke I know and like.
You appear to be arguing that any community in which people own guns constitutes a militia
Not at all. I did not say anything remotely like that. A militia is a community-based, irregular military unit whose members are responsible for providing their own weapons. A community in which many of the citizens own guns is not already a militia; a militia comes into being when some subset of those gun-owning citizens are brought together for military training or military action. If none of the citizens (or very few) own weapons, it becomes impossible to raise a militia. A community in which it is natural and normal for most citizens to own weapons is not already a militia, but it is the necessary pre-condition for being able to raise a militia.
Whatever you may think of the morality of the Revolution (and I think the points you raise in that regard are well worthy of discussion), as far as the framers of our Constitution were concerned, the Revolution was a justified rebellion against an unjust and tyrannical state — a rebellion which could never have succeeded without gun-owning citizen-soldiers marching to war carrying their own personal arms. That mind-set is indispensable in understanding what the framers were referring to in the preamble to the second amendment. The language of the second amendment is a bit archaic and high-toned, and it may need to be translated into everyday, contemporary English. I would say that “a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state …” means something like “You never know when we might need to get folks together with our weapons to defend our liberty against a tyrant, so …”.
in what sense is it “well regulated”?
I will admit that I am not at all sure what the framers meant by “well-regulated.” But one thing I am sure of is that the object of the verb “regulated” is the “militia”, not the “arms” referred to in the other clause of the amendment. The phrase “well-regulated militia” says that the militia should be regulated, not that the weapons may be regulated. The point of the amendment is to safeguard the right to keep and bear arms, and you can’t use the phrase “well-regulated” in the preamble to give the government carte blanche to take away the right that is protected in the body of the amendment.
For a more able statement than mine of what the second amendment means (and in particular what its preamble means), I recommend this article by constitutional law professor Glenn Reynolds:
http://www.guncite.com/journals/reycrit.html
It is an excellent and fair-minded survey of the legal scholarship on both sides of the question. It comes down on the side of it that I agree with, but it’s pretty fair to the other side, too. See what you think.
Thanks for the link, Chris. I realize I still have a lot to learn on all of this, so I fully intend to read it when I have the time to give it my full attention. (No, seriously. I do.
)
For the moment, let me say that I am not sold-out to anti-gun legislation, and I’d actually be more than open to solutions to our gun violence problem that genuinely involve “a well-regulated militia.” I think Switzerland is a fine example of a country that has kept gun crime low by arming its citizens; however, they require years of military service from each one of them, which (apparently) teaches them to respect weapons and use them well. Compulsory military service will never happen in our current political climate, but I could certainly see benefits to it.
“I humbly ask you to think long and hard about why you believe in protecting human life, and why you’re against protecting certain human lives.” Why do you assume that people on either side haven’t thought long and hard on it? Oops, I forgot to form an educated opinion because my little lady brain just can’t handle it! I support protecting the lives of women who are autonomous, sentient, have desires and dreams and children to care for and feed, bodies that only they know what is best for…. I support protecting these lives over the lives of embryos, zygotes, or fetuses. You cannot compare the value of a cluster of cells to the life of a fully formed person. Just like you can’t compare having the right to control over your own body to shooting some who threatens to take your stuff.
p.s. grow a uterus or stfu
Kristen, I’m not sure who you’re arguing with here, but it’s clearly not me. I never said anything to imply that women are somehow incapable of forming educated opinions. But since you claim to have thought hard about the question, I’ll go ahead and call your bluff:
Why *do* you believe in protecting human life?
So, the 17 year old boy who crashed his car (in front of my house) because of the GSW to his head and the young woman in the back seat who was badly injured and terrified – who I talked to and reassured and held her hand and covered her with my jacket and whose blood I just washed off of my hands – are the same as an unborn human? How many gun shots do you hear outside your house, let’s say in a week? And will you ever be pregnant? Your flippant and juvenile post about things that you seem to know nothing about is not offensive. I am not so easily offended by children.
So…let me get this straight, Gayle. You just spent half the night cleaning a bloody car wreck up in your front yard, and when you finally finished, your first thought was “I think I’ll go see what’s happening in the blogosphere”? I’m not sure your story checks out.
Regardless, I don’t recall saying that the life of a teenager and the life of an unborn human are “the same.” If I did, please show me where.
I actually went to a support group page to tell my story and another person had posted about your post so I decided to release a bit of the stress I was feeling by telling you about what really happens when people have guns. Yes, I did actually spend the evening dealing with gun violence. It’s not the first time. Where do you live? I live in East Oakland. You want to say some other shit to me about what I did last night? Bring it you disrespectful little shit.
You start out with, “The abortion nut is just a gun nut drenched in estrogen.” People – men and women – who are for as many guns as possible are not the same as people – men and women – who believe in legal abortion. Your entire post is comparing people who believe that guns are great with people who believe that women should have the right to control their own reproduction. Like this: I know that both groups are going to come back with “But they’re criminal scum and don’t deserve to live!” and/or “But they’re pre-human life with no meaningful right to existence!” It’s ridiculous and flippant. There is no comparison between what guns do to people and a woman choosing not to carry a pregnancy to term.
Gayle, I do apologize for being so flip with you when you first showed up. It wasn’t that I really doubted your story; it was just a strange and somewhat abusive comment, and I had no idea how to respond thoughtfully to it.
Your aversion to guns is completely understandable, given the gun violence you’ve seen up-close. I wonder if you could witness an abortion firsthand and still feel okay with it. (I don’t know — maybe you could. But it’s something to think about.)
I’d like to put an end to the flaming here, so let me just clarify one thing, and then I’ll bow out. Taking a stand against abortion is not the same thing as arguing that a fetus and an adult human are morally equivalent. I wouldn’t disagree that the death of an adult is the larger tragedy, but I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to say that the death of an unborn child is no tragedy at all. Death may sometimes be necessary, but it is never desirable.
People obviously feel strongly about these issues (I know: shocking, right?), and for the most part, I’m pleased to see the discussion that this post has generated. I think all of the comments so far merit an individual response, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to make that happen (EDIT: I just made it happen! Boo-yah!), so let me follow up with at least a few general thoughts.
The point of this post is absolutely *not* “Let’s ban all guns and abortions.” If I had wanted to say that, I would have come out and said it. All I’m really trying to do here is shine a light on the misplaced values and fallacies in thinking that the two camps (from my perspective, at least) hold in common.
I admit that my rhetoric (and frequently, a desire to say something provocative) often get the best of me when I write, so let me say that I am not as immoderate as this post may make me sound. I am far from convinced that a gun ban or an abortion ban would accomplish much in terms of saving lives; however, both are conversations worth having on a societal level, in my opinion.
What really irks me is people who are so in love with their own political viewpoints that they’ll hold them in higher regard than human life itself. Am I pleased that there are “good people” who own guns and know how to use them? To a point, yes. Am I pleased that women who truly need abortions have access to them? Again: to a point, yes. But I serve “The Lord and Giver of Life,” and therefore I can never truly celebrate death.
As a side note, I suppose I should mention that the line about offending everyone was meant in a self-deprecating way. I am not congratulating myself for offending people, because offending people isn’t an accomplishment.
I think it’s interesting that I happened to come across your blog in my facebook feed about this post, I have never come to your blog before. It’s funny because I had made a comparison between the gun and abortion issues in my own mind but for different reasons and it turns out to be pretty much opposite.
Let me preface my comparison with two things. First, I support our right to own guns, although I do question some of the high capacity ammo stuff, I also think that gun control is not the answer to tragedies like what happened at Sandy Hook. I think that mental health should be the main topic of discussion and I think it’s sad that guns have taken all of the attention here. Second, while if I had to pick a political label I guess I would be pro-choice even though I personally feel that abortion is wrong…
I realize you didn’t say that we should ban all guns, but I think that if we were to ban guns or a specific type of gun, it would be similar to banning abortion in that people would still have guns and still get abortions they would just go about it in an illegal way. So I think that the solution to preventing more abortions is to educate people about sex and it’s consequences (both physical as in the possibilities of STDs and pregnancy and also emotional effects) as well as birth control and make sure that it is accessible and affordable to all. I think that we should take a similar stance on guns: Education! People who want access to guns should have to be well educated on how to safely handle them. (This includes locking them up to keep them out of reach of their mentally unstable children!)
Krista — I absolutely believe education is key. If more people were better educated about sex, we’d have fewer unwanted pregnancies, and if more people were better educated about guns, we’d have fewer gun deaths. Sadly, ours is a culture that doesn’t appear to value education very highly (but then, I’m a teacher, so perhaps I’m biased in that regard). Really, if we could do more to combat poverty and illness (mental or otherwise), most of these problems would take care of themselves — which is why I tend to fall on the liberal end of the political spectrum.
Sometimes a post comes along that just forces me to see things in a completely different way. Thank you, Luke. This is the most insightful thing I’ve read all day. I just love the Internet!
Now that I know that abortion nuts do indeed exist, I have to say that I completely agree with you. These gun nuts are so totally obsessed with their wood-and-steel penis extensions! And then pro-abortion nuts, they just go get pregnant on purpose just so they can beef up their feminist credentials by having the contents of their uteruses (uteri? You’d know, you’re the teacher here, LOL) sucked out and then bragging about them, kind of like that George Zimmerman did when he stalked that black kid in Florida and shot him just so he could call himself a vigilante. And it’s a sign of just how depraved our society has become that women are having recreational abortions just so they can experience “that fresh feeling” that comes with having a squeaky-clean womb! It’s like something out of “Caligula”! (Ooops, maybe you’re too young to remember Caligula. You probably weren’t even a potential abortion when Caligula was made! Ah, those were the days. But I digress.) Or maybe those spas where women put their feet in fish tanks and let little schools of guppies nibble off all the dry skin? Decadent.
Now, see, I am of the opinion that people shouldn’t have abortions or guns unless they really, REALLY need them. And that they should be carefully trained in their use, maintenance, and storage. You wouldn’t want a small child coming across Mommy’s most recent abortion! Think of the mess! Think of the therapy bills!
And that they should probably have background checks. Mentally ill people with a history of violence to themselves and others DEFINITELY shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions. You don’t know what they’d do with them! If they only had babies, then all they could do would be to drown them, or shake them until their little brains rattled in their little heads, or let them bake in a car while they played video poker for hours in the local dive, or abuse them and turn them into mentally ill mini-mes. But, and this is the important point: NO UNBORN CHILDREN WOULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!
You, sir, are an unsung prophet of the first order.
Hmmm. That sounds oddly like sarcasm.
That aside, I don’t think I ever stated or even implied that “recreational abortions” are a thing (or, for that matter, that recreational gun crime is a thing). It *is* interesting to see all the things people are reading into this post, though.
Articles on controversial issues are like Rorschach tests, I suppose.
[...] So I posted the thing. I knew it was kinda half-baked and kinda stupid, but I figured it might get my blog some attention. After all, people don’t exactly flock to websites that post genuinely thoughtful and insightful stuff. And it did generate some traffic. And it did produce some response. But not necessarily the kind I wanted. [...]
[...] sure this will make me terribly unpopular in Internet-land, but I still really, really hate Twitter. And I think you’re a big stupid-face if you like [...]
[...] all it is. It’s a tool, and tools are only useful insofar as they are used wisely. (Gun nuts sure like referring to guns as “tools,” but try using a gun poorly some time and see [...]