Larry O’Connor:  No, Pro-Life Advocates Aren’t Hypocrites for Supporting Gun Rights

As predicted, after last week’s evil, horrific mass murder in Uvalde, Tex., the national conversation has centered almost entirely around gun control laws and the Second Amendment, not about mental health, proper police procedures, the lack of fathers in the homes of most of these murderers or securing our schools and protecting our children even half as much as we safeguard politicians in Congress and journalists in newsrooms. 

Nope, it’s all about AR-15s and background checks. Typical and predictable. 

Since this latest debate comes when we could see the Supreme Court strike down Roe v. Wade, there’s been an insidious new wrinkle added to the left’s arguments against your right to bear arms. It goes like this…

“You can’t be pro-life and still be pro-gun!” 

I don’t know about you, but I’m hearing it all over the place. It’s infantile, facile, completely devoid of logic or reason, and it’s become some sort of dogmatic mantra of the left. They proclaim it and repeat it as if it’s some sick burn. 

The only problem is that it is completely, morally incoherent. 

Seriously, it sounds like an argument made by a third-grader on the playground when trying to determine who would win in a fight between Superman and Batman. (Obviously, Superman.) 

Yes, you can be pro-life and pro-gun without being a hypocrite… the two positions have very little to do with one another. 

In fact, the one commonality between strong support of the Second Amendment and strong opposition to abortion argues for how the two ideological positions are consistent, not inconsistent. That one commonality is the protection of innocent life.

The Second Amendment provides Americans with a means of exercising their natural right to self-defense. A gun is a perfectly appropriate tool to protect your innocent life while also opposing abortion-on-demand to protect the lives of an untold number of unborn babies who otherwise would be extinguished. 

If one of your primary values is the protection and defense of innocent life from a violent, mortal threat, then being pro-life and supporting the Second Amendment is perfectly and reasonably consistent.

Moreover, the “you can’t be pro-life and still be pro-gun” argument fails at several other intelligent examinations beginning with the classic apples and oranges test. 

A gun is an object; abortion is an act. 

Supporting the right to own a gun has no direct moral implication since a person can own a gun and never use it. However, supporting, promoting, and funding abortions directly results in babies being killed—every single time. Every successful abortion ends a life. 

Every gun purchase merely results in the possession of an object that could potentially end a life. 

Further, abortion is designed to destroy innocent life. Abortion can’t be utilized for any other purpose. 

Guns, on the other hand, can be used for sport, they can be used for hunting, they can be used for entertainment purposes, they can be used to scare off a would-be attacker, and, regrettably, they can be used to take an innocent life. 

Suggesting that supporting gun ownership equals supporting the Uvalde murderer is like saying supporting car ownership equals supporting the Waukesha parade murderer (remember him?). Owning a gun doesn’t make you a killer any more than owning a car makes you a killer. The instrument of destruction is amoral. It only becomes an instrument of evil when used by an evil individual. 

The exact same gun used at Robb Elementary to murder innocent children could have been used by a teacher to defend those same children. Therefore, the gun is not the problem. 

We support gun rights because we want children to be defended from murderers who would use their guns to extinguish innocent life. In the same way, we oppose abortion laws that would allow those same children to be extinguished before they’re even born. 

There is no hypocrisy. There is no inconsistency. 

Pro-life merely means we want babies to have the chance to be born. And pro-2A means we want the right to defend our children after they’re born. 

It’s truly that simple. 

And that’s why your average college professor can’t understand it. 

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