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Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of gun laws like the court did yesterday? Why does the idea that abortion extinguishes life and therefore s

by slg 4y ago

Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of gun laws like the court did yesterday? Why does the idea that abortion extinguishes life and therefore supersedes all other rights not apply in other situations in which someone’s rights will lead to death? Either life is sacrosanct or it isn’t. Why are rights to guns more important than life but rights to bodily autonomy aren’t?

LudwigNagasena 4y ago
> Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of gun laws like the court did yesterday? > situations in which someone’s rights will lead to death Not all people are utilitarians, especially religious people.
dpbriggs 4y ago
It's rhetorically interesting to reach and point at this result as if it's some binary gotcha. For those who believe that abortion is murder, that's it. They don't need to care whether a state's gun laws are compatible with the US constitution.
hackinthebochs 4y ago
Broadly, there's two types of views regarding justice and how to construct a moral society: systemic responsibility vs individual responsibility. For the systemic responsibility view, you pull any and every lever to result in more preferable outcomes. For example, the response to rampant gun violence is more gun control. Here it makes sense to ask why we are not pulling every lever to prevent deaths from gun violence as we are deaths from abortion. This is in contrast to the individual responsibility view. Here, the response to immoral behavior is punishment for the wrongdoer only. Systemic issues are not relevant. In this case, there is no contradiction to punish women who get abortions and not increase restrictions on guns. (Of course, individuals will have views that are varying combinations of the two.)
- maxerickson 4y ago
  It's interesting how the "individual responsibility" mechanism works by depriving people of agency. Not gun owners of course, but the victims of gun violence.
xeromal 4y ago
I think many of them would argue self-defense is not the same thing as an abortion in most cases.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
You may be trying to compare very different things. Abortion by definition ends (aborts) a life. Having a right to own a gun does not automatically do that ( although it most certainly could ). We keep balancing stuff like that all the time. The seeming major difference here is that guns are explicitly mentioned in the constitution, while abortion is not ( and was invented from other amendments ).
remarkEon 4y ago
The court didn't "remove" gun laws yesterday. What they did was decide that states cannot have "may issue" laws and deny permits for arbitrary reasons. 2A is an enumerated right in the Constitution, and so there's a pretty high burden to restricting the exercise of that right. Incidentally, "may issue" laws traditionally were used to deny certain classes (usually black Americans) the ability to exercise their rights. >Why are rights to guns more important than life but rights to bodily autonomy aren’t? This strawman is bandied about a lot, but it deliberately misrepresents what is actually in the Opinions if you so choose to read them.
RHSeeger 4y ago
Because "killing someone" and "owning something that can kill someone" are VERY different things. Pretending that isn't the case is ridiculous. It is entirely possible to argue that what/how to limit ownership of "things that can kill people" is a much bigger gray area than "thou shalt not kill". To be absolutely clear, I'm in favor of stricter gun laws and I don't believe in absolute bans on abortion. I just hate it when people claim that anyone that does want a ban on abortion is a hypocrite or out to control everyone else. There are plenty of people that believe that abortion is murder, and that believe is entirely consistent with their views. They're not all bad people, they just have a different view of the world than us. And anyone that tries to lump them all in the evil bucket IS the problem.

by slg 4y ago

LudwigNagasena 4y ago

> Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of gun laws like the court did yesterday? > situations in which someone’s rights will lead to death Not all people are utilitarians, especially religious people.

dpbriggs 4y ago

It's rhetorically interesting to reach and point at this result as if it's some binary gotcha. For those who believe that abortion is murder, that's it. They don't need to care whether a state's gun laws are compatible with the US constitution.

hackinthebochs 4y ago

Broadly, there's two types of views regarding justice and how to construct a moral society: systemic responsibility vs individual responsibility. For the systemic responsibility view, you pull any and every lever to result in more preferable outcomes. For example, the response to rampant gun violence is more gun control. Here it makes sense to ask why we are not pulling every lever to prevent deaths from gun violence as we are deaths from abortion. This is in contrast to the individual responsibility view. Here, the response to immoral behavior is punishment for the wrongdoer only. Systemic issues are not relevant. In this case, there is no contradiction to punish women who get abortions and not increase restrictions on guns. (Of course, individuals will have views that are varying combinations of the two.)

maxerickson 4y ago
It's interesting how the "individual responsibility" mechanism works by depriving people of agency. Not gun owners of course, but the victims of gun violence.

xeromal 4y ago

I think many of them would argue self-defense is not the same thing as an abortion in most cases.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

You may be trying to compare very different things. Abortion by definition ends (aborts) a life. Having a right to own a gun does not automatically do that ( although it most certainly could ). We keep balancing stuff like that all the time. The seeming major difference here is that guns are explicitly mentioned in the constitution, while abortion is not ( and was invented from other amendments ).

remarkEon 4y ago

The court didn't "remove" gun laws yesterday. What they did was decide that states cannot have "may issue" laws and deny permits for arbitrary reasons. 2A is an enumerated right in the Constitution, and so there's a pretty high burden to restricting the exercise of that right. Incidentally, "may issue" laws traditionally were used to deny certain classes (usually black Americans) the ability to exercise their rights. >Why are rights to guns more important than life but rights to bodily autonomy aren’t? This strawman is bandied about a lot, but it deliberately misrepresents what is actually in the Opinions if you so choose to read them.

RHSeeger 4y ago

Because "killing someone" and "owning something that can kill someone" are VERY different things. Pretending that isn't the case is ridiculous. It is entirely possible to argue that what/how to limit ownership of "things that can kill people" is a much bigger gray area than "thou shalt not kill". To be absolutely clear, I'm in favor of stricter gun laws and I don't believe in absolute bans on abortion. I just hate it when people claim that anyone that does want a ban on abortion is a hypocrite or out to control everyone else. There are plenty of people that believe that abortion is murder, and that believe is entirely consistent with their views. They're not all bad people, they just have a different view of the world than us. And anyone that tries to lump them all in the evil bucket IS the problem.