You should wait at least as long before buying a gun as
before killing a baby – if HuffPo contributors Jan Diehm and Katy Hall had
their way, that is. It’s an outrage to them that there are more waiting periods
for abortions than there are for guns.
Diehm and Hall posted a piece [1] today complaining that more states require you to wait before having an abortion than before buying a gun. Using an infographic map, the article touted that 26 states have a waiting period for abortion, as opposed to 11 that require wait periods for firearms purchases. Fifteen states apparently have neither.
The authors mentioned gun control in connection to saving lives, but quickly dismissed the idea that waiting periods for counseling before abortion might save a baby’s life – a highly debatable point [2] and one that shouldn’t matter to liberals who say anything is worth doing “if it saves the life of just one child.”
The pair lamented that 24-hour waiting periods for abortion made the process “more drawn out for everyone and less accessible to people who live in rural areas or have to take time off of work.” Simply buying a gun ought to be at least as “drawn out” as murdering an infant in the womb, it seems.
Well, since HuffPo loves statistics, let’s take a look at another number. Abortion accounts for the deaths of approximately 1,210,000 babies every single year in the U.S. alone. [3] Gun-related deaths in the U.S., by contrast, account for about 30,000 [4] per year.
That’s at least 4,000 percent more abortion deaths than firearms deaths – or about 1.18 million more, if you do the math.
Crunch that number, HuffPo. If you’re interested in saving lives, which cause of death looks like it needs closer regulation? Too many more people die from abortion than from gun deaths in the U.S. to make the comparison even remotely important.
Of course, HuffPo in the past has shown it’s penchant for pushing gun control at every opportunity [5], while decrying attempts to dissuade mothers from aborting their children. [6] Chances are, if the situation was the other way around – if guns were never available and abortions available the very instant a woman discovered she was pregnant – HuffPo would be bouncing with joy.