If we changed the heading to "Pro-gun States" no one would notice.
The weird thing is how the pro-gun crowd is constantly harping about their rights. They also claim to not be racist or homophobic, so I guess it boils down to this, gunowners, gays, blacks and fetuses all have rights. Women do not.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
The question that needs to be asked is why do those who believe women have rights not believe that gun owners also have rights?
ReplyDeleteWow! did AztecRed really turn that one around.
ReplyDeleteThe actual question is why do the people who propose "gun rights" and talk about freedom allow for women to not have control over their bodies?
If you can't trust them with reporductive decisions, how can you trust them with a gun?
Better yet, how can you talk about right to life and allow for deadly force?
The problme is AztecRed, is that the gun rights position is based on lies: Lott and Kleck's fake stats and misrpresentation of the Second Amendment.
I support your right to be a part of a Swiss style military to prevent you from being oppressed by a large military.
But "gun rights" give me a break.
I resent your sweeping generality that everyone that supports our second amendment rights also is anti-abortion. The real world is not that simple.
ReplyDelete@ Laci. Nowhere did AztecRed say "gun rights". You see, guns don't have rights, the people have rights.
It all boils down to when "new life" begins. To those in the scientific community, it is hard to prove that new life does not begin at conception. You have a new distinct human being at that point. Yes the baby is entirely dependant on the mother for sustenance, but the baby is a unique individual that should have their right to life protected.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous, yeah, Laci's whole concept of "rights" is vastly over-liberalized... He doesn't think rights exist unless the society (or government) agrees they exist. I haven't seen him come right out and state it, but I suspect that Laci also believes that the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution grants us our rights, in spite of pretty much every Supreme Court ruling that addresses them.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the main post, it seems that neither the "left" or the "right" are in full support of ALL the rights of the people - each believes in protecting some rights and infringing on others. That's why I'm a Constitutional Libertarian, I believe in the protection of ALL rights for ALL the people.
...Orygunner...
I have always gotten a kick out of this type of arguing. It happens not just on the left, or on the right, or with only the gun debate, but it basically goes like this: One side supports A. They are incredulous that the other side supports B and not A. So they paint an argument that A=B and therefore you are a hypocrite if you support B and not A. Therefore you should support A and NOT support B (???). They look pretty foolish when someone comes along and says “well I support A and B, why don’t you”?
ReplyDeleteI support a woman’s right to get an abortion. I also support a woman’s right to own a gun. Women are every bit as capable of handling a gun for self-defense as men are. To suggest women would be worse off because the big bad man will obviously take it away from them and use it against them is offensive to women.
MikeB: “If we changed the heading to "Pro-gun States" no one would notice.”
ReplyDeleteActually we’d say “Whoa! Since when did we lose Oregon, Washington, Montana, Nevada, Colorado, Kentucky, Vermont, etc, etc, etc…”
OK--so you've made a plausible case for some correlation between pro-gun advocacy and anti-abortion advocacy. Good for you. You have not shown that holding one of those positions necessitates holding the other--and cannot do so, because it is very obviously untrue.
ReplyDeleteI stay just as far away from the abortion debate as I possibly can, but I will submit that saying an anti-abortion stance is anti-woman's rights seems something of a stretch.
It seems to me that the abortion debate is more a question of biology, than of philosophy. Is a fetus a human being (who would therefore have human rights), or isn't it?
The position of abortion rights supporters, clearly, is that a fetus is not a human being. As I said, I'm staying out of this argument if I can, and won't claim that such a position is wrong. Still, is the answer so clearly, definitely "not a human being" as to be beyond any question, rendering abortion opponents oppressors of women? I'm not so sure.
Further complicating the picture is the fact that the laws of 29 states, including "progressive" California, allow charging the killer of a pregnant woman with double homicide:
Scott Peterson, her widower, is being charged both with Laci's slaying, and the slaying of their unborn son, Connor, because California is one of 29 states with so-called fetal homicide laws.
Presumably, most California voters, and therefore most California legislators, support robust protection for the right of women to terminate their pregnancies, but the fetal homicide law was passed anyway. That would seem to indicate that the prevailing view is that an unborn baby is an expendable fetus, which the woman has every right to abort--if that's what she judges it to be--but is a human being, with human rights, if the woman decides that. Biologically, nothing between those two cases is any different--but morally, evidently, there is. That doesn't strike you as odd?
To leap from a correlation between pro-gun advocacy and anti-abortion advocacy, to "gun rights advocates oppose the rights of women," with as little evidence as you have provided, is to build a structure of logic that can be most accurately described as "extremely rickety."
"Better yet, how can you talk about right to life and allow for deadly force?"
ReplyDeleteBecause more often than not, the best way to protect life is to take it away from those who want to destroy it.
"It all boils down to when "new life" begins. To those in the scientific community, it is hard to prove that new life does not begin at conception."
ReplyDeleteActually, Jim, you're full of shit. If a fetus was a human, abortion would be murder. Let me know when that law gets on the books. Until then, abortion is a medical procedure.
Aww, hell, it's easy to explain.
ReplyDeleteScientifically, life begins at conception.
Politically, life begins at birth.
Morally, well, it's up to your own personal morals.
There, problem solved, no?
...Orygunner...
Demo - I think Orygunner summed it up well. Sure the laws on the books say one thing, but I would bet 100% of scientists would identify an aborted human fetus as human. What species do you think they would classify a human fetus?
ReplyDeleteTS said what I think, almost.
ReplyDelete"I support a woman’s right to get an abortion. I also support a woman’s right to own a gun."
I'd only add that to own a gun she'd be subject to severe restrictions.
A womans right starts and ends when she decides to allow a sexual
ReplyDeleteencounter or clinical placement of sperm, with sperm in the uterus its just a roll of the dice. The coming child or children are depending on the woman for nourishment and protection.
This is a very old post. Are you a MAN pontificating on women's rights?
Delete