Of course gun control is not a pro-life issue. Gun violence is.

elf-described pro-lif­ers have a jeal­ousy issue about abor­tion. Pro­pose the exis­tence of oth­er pro-life issues and they get exas­per­at­ed. Where does it end? Is the kitchen sink a pro-life issue too? More than one pro-life issue “waters down” oppo­si­tion to abor­tion, they say. They’re like the child who fears a new baby in the fam­i­ly means mom and dad will start to love them less. Should we lim­it fam­i­lies to one child to be gen­uine­ly pro-life? Pope St. John Paul II saw it dif­fer­ent­ly; he writes in Evan­geli­um Vitae 29 that the world is faced with “count­less grave threats to life.” It was impor­tant to him to write about the gospel of life

because of the extra­or­di­nary increase and grav­i­ty of threats to the life of indi­vid­u­als and peo­ples, espe­cial­ly where life is weak and defence­less. In addi­tion to the ancient scourges of pover­ty, hunger, endem­ic dis­eases, vio­lence and war, new threats are emerg­ing on an alarm­ing­ly vast scale. (EV 3)

But Alt! Abor­tion is of par­tic­u­lar grav­i­ty because it is a non-nego­tiable issue! It is intrin­si­cal­ly evil! Catholics are free to dis­agree about gun con­trol, but not abor­tion.

The abor­tion-only pro-lif­er who says this has in mind these words of Car­di­nal Ratzinger, when he was pre­fect of the CDF:

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abor­tion and euthana­sia. For exam­ple, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment or on the deci­sion to wage war, he would not for that rea­son be con­sid­ered unwor­thy to present him­self to receive Holy Com­mu­nion. While the Church exhorts civ­il author­i­ties to seek peace, not war, and to exer­cise dis­cre­tion and mer­cy in impos­ing pun­ish­ment on crim­i­nals, it may still be per­mis­si­ble to take up arms to repel an aggres­sor or to have recourse to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. There may be a legit­i­mate diver­si­ty of opin­ion even among Catholics about wag­ing war and apply­ing the death penal­ty, but not how­ev­er with regard to abor­tion and euthana­sia.

The prob­lem here is that, when a per­son rais­es this objec­tion, he is con­flat­ing two sep­a­rate issues: gun con­trol and gun vio­lence.

The pro-life issue is not the absence of gun con­trol. The pro-life issue is the pres­ence of gun vio­lence.

Gun con­trol is a pol­i­cy pro­pos­al which aims to reduce the vio­lence, and it may—in one case or another—be good or bad and Catholics are free to debate and dis­agree about such things.

What one can­not say is that, because abor­tion is so heinous, gun vio­lence is not intrin­si­cal­ly evil or a pro-life issue. Catholics may dis­agree about what to do about it, but not about the nature of gun vio­lence itself. And it is illic­it to con­flate gun vio­lence and gun con­trol pro­pos­als.

But Alt! Sup­pose some­one broke into your home and raped your daugh­ter! Would­n’t you want her to have a gun to pro­tect her­self? Hav­ing a gun reduces instances of vio­lence against women. Isn’t that a pro-life issue too?

Sure. The per­son who makes this argu­ment tends to believe that more guns, not few­er guns, is the best solu­tion to the prob­lem. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, and all that.

The only prob­lem here, if you want to ask such a ques­tion, is that you are con­flat­ing two sep­a­rate things again: gun con­trol and gun bans. It is true that some peo­ple want to ban guns alto­geth­er, or repeal the Sec­ond Amend­ment. I don’t hap­pen to be one of them. (Believe it or not, there is is much diver­si­ty of opin­ion among gun con­trol advo­cates and it does help to know what the par­tic­u­lar per­son you’re speak­ing to actu­al­ly believes.)

Oth­er peo­ple want to ban only par­tic­u­lar kinds of guns, such as AR-15s. Or, they want stricter back­ground checks. Some pro­pose allow­ing the fam­i­lies of vic­tims to be able to sue gun mer­chants. There are many dif­fer­ent pro­pos­als that cov­er vast ground from less restric­tive to more restric­tive.

But it is inac­cu­rate to say that gun con­trol advo­cates “hate guns” or “hate the sec­ond amend­ment.” This is a com­mon accu­sa­tion; and in a small num­ber of cas­es it’s true, but a small num­ber. It is impor­tant here to remem­ber that the sec­ond amend­ment itself assumes that guns will be reg­u­lat­ed. That’s why it begins by refer­ring to a “well-reg­u­lat­ed mili­tia.” Thus ear­ly gun laws, for exam­ple, required all firearms to be reg­is­tered. There were safe stor­age laws, which man­dat­ed that guns be kept unloaded. The Found­ing Fathers did not in any way imag­ine that the sec­ond amend­ment meant that you could not have gun laws to pro­tect pub­lic safe­ty.

Dis­tinc­tions mat­ter, and few would actu­al­ly argue that gun con­trol is a pro-life issue. Some may, but they would be wrong. The pro-life issue is gun vio­lence. Catholics may legit­i­mate­ly dis­agree on what to do about it. But what you can­not say is that it’s not intrin­si­cal­ly evil; it is. You can­not say it’s not a pro-life issue; it is. And you can­not give mere lip ser­vice to it; it’s a seri­ous prob­lem that Catholics have no excuse not to seri­ous­ly address.