Reply #63: Gun control advocates and anti-abortion people have a lot in common

[slackmaster]

Both positions when taken to the point of harassing and inconveniencing people, and backed up with the threat of criminal prosecution for non-compliance, reveal themselves as inherently authoritarian.

We have a national database of people who are prohibited by law from owning a firearm. If you're not in the database, no interest is served by forcing you to wait in order to exercise that right. You've already decided you need or want a gun and are willing to pay for it. You don't need more time to think it over. You don't need to be interviewed by a cop to see if you are of good moral character or have a "legitimate" need for a weapon.

Likewise, a woman who has decided to get an abortion has already been thinking about it for more than 24 hours by the time she requests it. She doesn't need more time, she doesn't need an ultrasound examination, she doesn't need someone going over "alternatives". She doesn't need to be shown gory colorful photos of aborted fetuses.

In both cases the "waiting period" serves only as an attempt to intimidate the person into not going through with the decision - There is no hard evidence that the delay does any good in either situation.

Both anti-abortion extremists and gun control zealots claim to be working to save the lives of innocent people. Both claim deep moral convictions and the moral high ground. Both say that those who don't share their extreme views are complicit in an ongoing slaughter of children. Both will accuse those who disagree of just not having thought the matter through to its (one and only) logical conclusion, or having been brainwashed by an organized conspiracy to perpetuate a profitable evil.

Another hallmark of a zealot is the use of logically disjoint bits of propaganda. Extreme gun control advocates will tell you you don't need a weapon for protection. They'll say the police will protect you, that if handguns are banned that the bad guys won't have them, and that if you have a gun it will end up being used against you. Anti-abortionists say you should just have the baby and give it up for adoption, or that once you give birth your natural instincts will take over and you'll want to keep the child. Never mind that you may be the subject of a stalker who wants to kill you; or that bearing the child of a man you don't want to have anything to do with, or at a time when you are just not ready, will ruin your life.

Rather than trying to win over hearts and minds, authoritarians go straight to the use of the force of law to eliminate a practice they see as unacceptable, and that while most people in general never indulge of it a majority, when asked in an objective manner, will say they don't want to have their options restricted.

My eighth grade political science teacher explained it in a way I've never forgotten. He drew a diagram of characteristics of the left and the right. He bent the spectrum into a large curve that covered most of the blackboard (this was in the early 1970s when people still used chalk). His point, which he made eloquantly, was that when you go far enough to the right or to the left you end up at the same place: Government decides what's best for you, you don't get to decide any more, disagree and you go to jail.