Well, maybe gun control is a pro-life matter if it is admitted that guns are effective tools to protect the weak and vulnerable from criminals. It is a pro-life action to save a life from harm. But this blog post is about something else.
Christians are often scolded for failing to include better gun control (or banning) in their arguments against abortion and euthanasia. As defined, abortion is the taking of a human life which is yet unborn. Euthanasia is the taking of a human life who is deemed too disabled, ill, or old to be allowed to survive. Abortion is always involuntary for the baby; euthanasia may be voluntary but is increasingly being made involuntary by families and authorities. To be pro-life, the Christian argues, is to be against these acts of murder.
As the gun control argument is presented, Christians are inconsistent if they do not likewise seek to limit access to firearms so that mass shooting tragedies could be reduced or avoided completely.
But if the argument is made this way, it ignores the fact that the most vocal opponents of firearm access are also the most likely to be proponents of abortion and euthanasia. The irony is that those who would control firearms through state regulations are the same people who invoke the powers of the same state regulators to pay for abortions and euthanasia, to train doctors to perform them and limits protestors’ freedom of expression to protest against it.
The government that enforces laws against murder does not at the same time train killers and provide their weapons. It does not protect them from the consequences of their acts and rightly condemns them.
Comparing abortion, euthanasia to mass shootings and murder doesn’t acknowledge this significant difference, while at the same time refusing to see the one similarity: all kill the innocent all are murder.
No one should listen to anyone who calls for a surrender of firearms but pushes for the government-sanctioned murder of the most helpless people in society. Such a mindset is so skewed, so schizophrenic, so depraved as to be disqualified from the discussion. It matters little if the pro-choice crowd has the peoples’ support, state authority and finance, church support, popular media praise, or the approval of educational institutions. The fact is if they will kill the helpless they will eventually get around to you.
Mass shootings are rare. Abortion and euthanasia are not. Jesus warned against swallowing a camel but chocking on a gnat. Failure to know the difference is what damned the Pharisees of His day and it can do the same today.