The following has been circulating all over the internet. Apologies if you have already seen it, but one of tasks of Epicureans is to unmask hypocrisy, preferably with humour:
“How about we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion — a mandatory 48-hr waiting period, parental permission, a note from his doctor proving he understands what he’s about to do, a video he has to watch about the effects of gun violence. Let’s close down all but one gun shop in every state and make him travel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and stay overnight in a strange town to get a gun. Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, people who call him a murderer and beg him not to buy a gun.
“It makes more sense to do this with young men and guns than with women and health care, right? I mean, no woman getting an abortion has killed a room full of people in seconds, right?” (origin unknown)
The logic of this doesn’t quite make sense. It suggests that we treat potential gun owners the way we treat women who want an abortion. But the vast majority of gun owners never kill anyone, and an even bigger majority never intend to. However, all women who want an abortion want to kill their fetus, and the vast majority of those who want an abortion succeed.
This only makes sense if you are pro life as well as pro gun control, on the basis that wanting to do something wrong should be as difficult as possible. But liberals who are in favour of gun control are generally pro choice.
The statement, ‘no woman getting an abortion has killed a room full of people in seconds,’ doesn’t take into account the wider context. Far more babies are aborted every year than people killed in mass shootings. Even within the context of violent crime, deaths from mass shootings only make up a small proportion of murders. Most murders are from pistols or knives, and they occur in poor inner city areas, meaning that gun control (or at least the sort of gun control Democrats are proposing) will not have any meaningful impact on the overall murder rate. What will, is better funded and more effective policing. What this exactly involves is debatable, but it certainly doesn’t involve budget cuts to law enforcement agencies- something which the Black Lives Matter movement supports; Democrats are unwilling to criticise Black Lives Matter on this issue for fear of being called racist.
Then there’s the question of electability, given the upcoming primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. Saying things like ‘how about we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion’, may go down a treat with the Democrats’ progressive base. But its hardly an appealing catchphrase for people who currently vote Republican. If you want to win elections, you have to appeal to people beyond your base. This doesn’t necessarily involve moving to the political centre, but it certainly involves phrasing matters in a more appealing and less divisive manner.
This is meant “tongue in cheek”. No one would ever dream of it as a practical proposition or part of a political programme. It merely points up what looks like hypocrisy, when you put poorblack women through the ringer but allow all and sundry to buy guns and even take them to college classes (which is the latest horrible idea). I appreciate that you have spent a lot of time replying to the post, but don’t take it seriously.