For over a month now our nation has been in the throws of yet another debate over gun control. It's not the first time and won't be the last. Those in favor of establishing restrictions the types of weapons and ammunition private citizens can own are currently resting their arguments primarily on the devastating attack in Newtown, CT. The stated motive: protecting our innocent children.
Aside from my belief that banning any type of weapons will do nothing to make us or our children any safer, and that the unintended consequences could actually do the opposite, I was met with a perplexing juxtaposition this week. In the news of the week was an 'anniversary' of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision making abortion legal in all 50 states. Some in our society celebrate this decision, and its anniversary, as a milestone accomplishment. Oddly, at least in my view, the proponents of strict gun control measures, ostensibly for protecting children, almost unanimously favor abortion. It is certainly true of the political leaders pressing the effort. I find those positions to be absurd and irreconcilable.
To illustrate the absurdity of it I offer my point by point comparison of the two.
- The right to keep and bear arms is expressly listed in the Bill of Rights. The right to an abortion was invented from whole cloth by the Supreme Court stretching to connect it to a right to privacy and based on medical knowledge of the 1960s. (At least one of those justices later stated that his decision was based partly on the perceived need for population control.)
- The Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights, as were those in all of the first 6, because the framers understood that they were the rights most likely to be threatened by future tyrants. They also understood that some would attempt to chip away at this right a little at a time. Thus the phrase "shall not be infringed", the strongest language found in the Bill of Rights. Abortion, or anything like it, is never mentioned anywhere in any part of the Constitution.
- Second Amendment supporters are called extremists if they object to encroachments of their liberties that detractors call "reasonable gun control" measures, despite the strong prohibition to such expressed in the amendment. Abortion rights activists fight against any limitations or even conditions, such as Informed Consent.
- There are millions of the proposed-ban guns currently owned by law abiding, responsible gun owners. Less than .01% of those guns are ever used in a crime. EVERY abortion ends in the brutal death of an innocent child.
- Gun control advocates claim the founding fathers could never have imagined the semi-automatic weapons we have today. Regardless of what technology they envisioned, they intended for the citizens to have parity with their contemporary criminals and potential tyrants, foreign or domestic. What the founding fathers could not possibly have envisioned is tens of millions of innocent children being ripped piece by piece from their mothers' wombs, and that their mothers themselves would be co-conspirators.
- Abortion supporters claim that prohibiting abortion would lead women "into back alley abortionists" risking their health. This suggests an awareness of the concept of 'unintended consquences'. Libs are not so willing to acknowledge the unintended consequences of banning semiautomatic weapons. Dozens, if not hundreds, of citizens defend themselves with firearms every single day. Most never have to fire a shot, simply making the would-be criminal aware of the firearm does the trick. Under Fienstein's proposal, those people would likely become part of the violent crime statistics.
- This recent uproar was started by the senseless mass murder of 26 people, including 20 beautiful, innocent children. That same day nearly 4,000 beautiful, innocent children were killed in American abortion clinics. Sadly there were another 4,000 the next day. And the next, And the next.
- In the estimated 8 minutes in took for the Sandy Hook shooter to kill those 26, and every 8 minutes before and since, 51 healthy babies were slaughtered without being allowed to draw their first breath. (Presuming an average 10 hour/day, 6 day work week.)
