Abortion, Firearms, Fear and Freedom

The purpose of this paper is to asses various arguments for and against gun control and abortion. The purpose of this argument is not to assess the logical validity of the arguments, or the correctness of the positions. Instead, it is intended to highlight that it is not logical argument or empirical data that causes us to hold positions on these issues, but rather it is conicting worldviews that exist within ourselves. One argument I have heard against guns... Death is the most negative impacting thing that can happen to a community. Guns create death (to the tune of 30,000+ a year) The purchase of guns is based on fear. The fear is wrong and invalidates the purchase and un-justies the death. If that is true then: Death is --still-- the most negative impacting thing that can happen to a community. Abortions create death (to the tune of 1,200,000+ a year). The purchase of abortions is based on fear. The fear is wrong and invalidates the purchase and un-justies the death.

One argument that I have heard for abortion... Limiting abortion infringes on the right of a woman to control her own body. Her body is her own possession. Pro-choice is the path towards greater freedom, since it fundamentally reduces government intrusion into ones life. If that is true, then there should be no argument against gun ownership. The argument follows... Limiting gun ownership infringes on the right of men and women to control their own property. Their property is their own possession. Expanding gun ownership is the path towards greater freedom, since it fundamentally reduces government intrusion into ones life.

Another argument I have heard against gun ownership...

One person possessing a gun actually infringes upon the rights of other people--namely, the person who is accidentally (or purposefully) shot and injured/killed by that weapon. In order to maximize freedom for the greatest number of people, gun ownership should be limited or banned wholesale. If this argument is reasonable, then it also applies to abortion. The act of one person going through with an abortion actually infringes upon the rights of other people--namely the person being aborted, and the father and extended family of that baby who (potentially) may want to keep that baby. In order to maximize freedom for the greatest number of people, abortion should be limited or banned wholesale.

Again, the purposes of outlining these arguments is not necessarily to assess their logical validity; nor is it to express that abortion or gun ownership is right (any more than to express that anti-abortion or gun control is right). Instead, the arguments above are comparative, and are intended to highlight that the exact same logic may be employed for both. The overarching point is this: that from our worldview creates values; from values, morality; from morality, ethical choices. And from both morality and ethical choices, ultimately legislation. Consider: if the fundamental issue behind a pro-gun control stance is the preservation of life, then one would naturally expect that pro-life supporters would be behind gun control. In like manner, if the fundamental issue behind abortion is the expansion of liberty, then one would naturally expect pro-choice advocates to also support gun ownership. Conversely, if the preservation of life is the fundamental issue, one would not expect a pro-choice advocate to argue for the preservation of 30,000 lives via gun control, while blindly ignoring the 1.2 million lives lost from his own position. Also in converse, if the expansion of liberty is the fundamental issue, one would not expect a pro-gun ownership advocate to argue against the expansion of liberty for abortions, while blindly ignoring his/ her own arguments for the expansion of liberty with guns. The reality, of course, is that pro-life supporters routinely argue for gun ownership, and pro-choice supporters routinely argue for gun control. The reason for this is not mathematical, ecological or empirical. The reasons is that people, within themselves, have adopted conicting--sometimes directly opposing-worldviews. A classic case-in-point is that of Christians who rabidly espouse free-markets. The conict plays out thusly: First, God is not a free-marketer in the sense that the market denes what is good, right, or moral. God has deemed that some things are worth protecting (innocent life). God has deemed that some things do not, in fact, belong to us (our bodies).

If a Christian champions the free-market at large, he/she is forced to allow a free-market solution to things like abortion. This would mean removing government funding (and restrictions) at all levels. This would, in fact, open up abortions for any reason whatsoever at the state level. Insurance companies can (and would) carry this in their packages, which would result in a far lower facia cost to the consumer. In turn, this would actually increase abortions--the very thing that a Christian would want to avoid. Yet, if the Christian champions God's values, then he/she must admit at the fore that they are not a 100% free-marketer. They believe, like God, that some things are worth protecting. That is a kind of protectionism. But clearly they do not believe in all protectionism. They only believe in protecting those tangental things which touch on the values that they share. On its face, this seems highly hypocritical. However, as demonstrated above: this is exactly what everyone does. We are purposefully only seeing one or two dimensions of our own arguments in order to maintain the conicting worldviews and core beliefs within us. A pointed example: Pro-choice advocates probably only see liberty expansion for their own purposes; they probably do not recognize liberty expansion for gun ownership. Nor does either side recognize liberty expansion for things which may, or may not, have anything to do with their own value-sets (ie. young/old relationships (now called statutory rape), incest, polygamy). The reader should understand that I am not suggesting that with the expansion of one liberty, others will naturally follow. Im not advocating a slippery slope argument. What I am atly stating is that the same argument a person may employ for pro-choice or gun ownership, may also be employed for other issues as well. If the logic is valid for one, it is equally valid for another. Lets go back to the argument for abortion. It begins with the assertion that a female owns her own body. As such, she has the right to control every aspect of her body. Now let us removed the subject (abortion), but retain the premises (1. a person owns their own body, and 2. they have the right to do with it what they want.) If it can be maintained that these two premises have no terminators, then this not only applies to adults but children as well. If that is the case, then a child (well say a 10 year old boy, for example), has the right to be sexually active with--and marry--a 40 year old man. This is true if both people involved own their own bodies and can do with them as they see t. Further, in the interest of freedom, removing government regulation maximizes freedom of choice for both parties, just as both pro-choice and pro-gun advocates have already argued previously. If this example causes the reader some discomfort, the reader should be reminded that this is exactly what groups like NAMBLA are ghting for. But the reader should also be reminded that this is the very light-end of where this logic can lead. After all, if a 46 year old man owns his own body--and his twenty year old daughter owns her own--and if they both wish it, then what should prevent them from romping around in the sack for three years? (Epstein, for those not following the clues.) Again, let me come around to my broader point: what makes, say, homosexual marriage right or wrong is not so much a product of logical reasoning, as it is a product of the worldview that we happen to adhere to. The same logical reasoning that would usher in homosexual marriage should (if we were logical) abolish statutory rape and usher in polygamy.

There are, indeed, many other arguments on all sides for gun ownership, gun control, the abolishment of abortion and greater abortion access. This purpose of this paper is not to analyze every conceivable argument. However, one additional argument that I would like to address is that our arguments are conveyed from empirical data. Cold. Hard. Facts. One argument recently touted is that guns actually cause crime. This claim is supposedly backed by raw, empirical data. Yet, at this site: http://hnn.us/articles/871.html author (retired professor of constitutional and criminal law, and criminologist) Don B. Kates canvases hundreds of years of history (and data) on two continents to assert just the opposite claim. This leaves us in a rather sticky position. Multiple studies on the effects of gun control (and abortion) have been conducted, and published. And depending on which study you read, you are likely to be convinced that either gun control is effective in reducing crime (as with the case of Japan, perhaps) or that guns have almost no bearing on crime (as with the UK, perhaps). I would posit that the results of a study--and your assessment of that study--are based more on our personal (conicted) worldviews than we would like to admit. Facts are bare. Only very rarely do they interpret themselves. And in order to come away with any understanding of a subject around those facts, we have to assess those facts within a model--a framework of understanding--a worldview. At issue then is not the political rigamarole of taking a position on guns or abortion; rather, it is identifying the conicted worldviews within us that are shaping the way we think, the way we receive and process data, and the way we output that data through action in our lives. We must nd a way, if possible, to deconict those worldviews--both within ourselves and with one another.