25 April 2007

Guns and Abortion

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about my frustration at having to wait 72 hours to pick up the handgun I'd just purchased...while any woman in the state can have an abortion immediately upon discovering she is pregnant. And yet which decision---to purchase a handgun or have an abortion---is more life-changing and worthy of taking time for reflection and "cooling off"?

Bruce Thornton makes another excellent contrast between gun regulations and abortion laws:

The worst of these prejudices, however, is the liberal bias against trusting individuals to make decisions about how to manage their own lives. Restrictive gun control laws assume that people are too untrustworthy or incapable or stupid to keep and carry a weapon. Thus laws are written by elite snobs who think they know how to run your life better than you do. Of course, this presumption of the average person’s incompetence is very selective. The same people who think a sane, law-abiding citizen can’t be trusted with carrying a gun will assume that a 15-year-old girl should be allowed to abort her baby. Think about it: the mature person can’t carry a gun because he might kill someone, but the teenaged girl can have an abortion that definitely will kill someone.

BTW, I did pick up my Springfield XD .45 ACP handgun last week, and it is a very sweet firearm. I just wish the State of Illinois trusted me enough to let me carry it in public for personal protection---and the protection of those around me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just discovered your blog by way of Steve Skojec's site. It's definitely bookmarked. Reading my way through it but I just had to stop here and comment.

Good choice on the XD. I bought an XD9 subcompact last March. Love it. It replaced the full size Witness 9mm as my carry piece. Shame you're in the Peoples' Republic of Illinois, though. I'm guessing you're in the northern part?

I will read with interest your farm related stuff. We recently bought a house on twenty acres near Kentucky Lake. Most of it is wooded and hilly but there are a few acres cleared. I'm not a total newcomer to chickens, goats, and the like and we've tossed about the idea of getting some. Lots of work ahead though because we're starting from scratch there... no fencing, barns, henhouse, etc.