One might imagine that if you are pro-life you should also support gun control.
Guns extinguish life, after all.
That intuition leads many on the Left to criticize Republican pro-lifers who support Second Amendment rights.
Both issues are volatile this election year. If an inconsistency exists, though, it exists no less for Democrats.
President Obama’s January 5 press conference was full of emotional calls for Americans to accept restrictions on their freedom to save kids’ lives — creating obvious tension with his unwavering abortion advocacy.
This surface comparison of abortion and gun issues turns out to be far too simplistic.
On the right, it’s not just middle-aged white Republicans who favor gun rights.
In an October Gallup poll, the age group most likely to believe “the United States would be safer” if “more Americans carried concealed weapons” was 18–29 year olds, with 66 percent responding favorably.
Meanwhile, since 1975 young people’s views have trended pro-life faster than the views of their older contemporaries.
Pro-life, pro-gun young people might be sensing the principled difference between guns and abortion.
Though it’s a cliche, it’s still a literal truth that guns don’t kill people, people do. Or to be more precise, most guns don’t kill people. Someone can own a gun without killing anyone or committing crimes. Nearly all American guns and owners fall into this category.
After mass shootings, the Left has recently taken to suggesting that getting a gun should be as difficult as getting an abortion.
That analogy begs the question by assuming that no one is killed either in buying a gun or in buying an abortion.
From the pro-life perspective, every abortion kills a baby. Most guns don’t kill anyone.
So if there’s an analogy between abortion and gun issues, the proper comparison is not between abortion and guns, but between abortion and gun violence.
Pro-lifers oppose gun violence. They want to outlaw both abortion and school shootings. They want to protect both sets of children.
While there over 300 million guns in circulation and over 20 million purchased each year, there are about 10,000 gun murders annually (and another 20,000 gun suicides).
But there are over 1 million abortions. So when the Left says to regulate abortion and gun issues similarly, pro-lifers say: Great, let’s reduce abortions to from 1 million down to about 10,000.
Pro-choice advocates would never accept the restrictions needed to make that change. They don’t think the issues are parallel after all.
On a more fundamental level, many pro-lifers view their pro-gun views as being positively pro-life, and not just separate issues.
Families or single moms who buy guns to defend their homes don’t use the guns in gang wars. They use them to defend their children from being robbed and assaulted.
In a Sandy Hook-style scenario, gun owners associate themselves, morally, not with the shooters but with the police.
Religious teachings affirm the pro-life character of defending others. While individual U.S. Bishops have favored increasing gun control and Pope Francis is viewed as a political liberal, the Catechism of the Catholic Church declares that when someone is “responsible for the lives of others” he or she has “the right to use arms to repel aggressors.”
No pro-life religious leader would consider it morally acceptable to buy and use abortions. But the guards of many churches, including Pope Francis’ personal guards, buy and use guns.
To be sure, there are pro-life people and arguments favoring gun control. Longtime pro-life activist and Evangelical preacher Rev. Rob Schenck was recently the subject of a documentary highlighting his opposition to America’s “gun culture.”
The pro-life case for gun control amounts to a much more indirect argument, however, than its case against abortion.
The argument goes that if we enact vast gun control, it might trickle down beyond responsible gun owners to also prevent criminals from accessing guns.
But that’s a practical debate, not a principled one. Paris’ intense gun control didn’t stop the November 2015 terrorist attack. America’s gun murder rate has decreased over the last 15 years alongside a massive increase in guns owned. And the Second Amendment isn’t going to be repealed anytime soon.
Christians such as Rev. Schenck also critique the machismo and gun voyeurism sometimes associated with pro-gun activists. But there’s no need for pro-gun pro-lifers to adopt that appendage.
Finally, Schenck calls Christians to abdicate guns the way Christ did not resist his crucifixion. This raises an age-old struggle within Christianity about how to be “detached” from the world while still living in it.
The solution has been to counsel detachment “in spirit” — from money, pleasure, even self-defense — but not literally, not for everyone.
Ordinary families, and many pro-lifers, believe they can love life and strive for peace while protecting their kids — including through responsible gun ownership.
Matt Bowman is a pro-life, religious liberties and constitutional law attorney in the Washington, D.C., area. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
