Peter Green explores one of the strangest paradoxes of our time: how can people be “pro-life” and also oppose any gun control? Guns kill people. Guns kill thousands of people every year. Consistency would demand that a person who is pro-life would also want to regulate the sale of guns.

But no. Among the most zealous pro-life governors is Ron DeSantis of Florida. He doesn’t want any woman to get an abortion, regardless of the peril to her life or the fetus. But when it comes to guns, DeSantis wants everyone to have at least one.

Green writes:

This week in his State of the State speech, Ron DeSantis announced that it was time to get over the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting–that would be the one in Parkland in which a 19-year-old killed 17 and injured 17 others in the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in US history. 

After that shooting, the state put in place a piddly excuse for an attempt to make such horrors less likely, but even that is too much for DeSantis, who specifically wants to get rid of language raising the age to purchase a shotgun or rifle from 18 to 21 and also the red flag law that lets family members or law enforcement petition the court to remove someone’s firearms id they are risk to themselves of others. You know– like maybe a 19 year old with a long history of racism and fascination with mass shootings. “We need to be a strong Second Amendment state. I know many of you agree, so let’s get some positive reform done for the people in this state of Florida,” DeSantis was quoted by the Florida Phoenix. 

Also, he’d like to have open carry in the state.

Because nothing is more important than an American’s God-given right to shoot other people. Because we should go to any length to “protect” a fetus, but once it’s a live child, its life is less important than someone’s right to fire off a couple of rounds at anyone that bugs them. Because this is one more way politicians can show that for all their talk, they don’t particular care about young humans. 

On the right column of the blogspot version of this blog, I have had one image parked for years. It’s not complicated

I would say that it’s the least we could do, but of course the least we can do is nothing, and Ron DeSantis would like us to get back to doing that. 

The only bright spot here is that the legislature doesn’t seem to have his back on this. Good. DeSantis should be ashamed that he can’t even produce a bad argument for his favored policies other than complaining that Florida has “lagged on this issue.” What a bummer– imagine all the people who are going to some other state because it’s easier to shoot people there.