That’s rich, coming from the most rigid man in the Catholic blog world! Especially when I am the one supporting the bishops, anbd everybody else saying they are basically full of crap. And instead of hectoring Vox Nova and its bloggers, maybe you should look to your bishop-bashing buddies over at What’s Wrong with the World?

Even if one believes abortion to be a pre-existing right, there is no constitutional protection for it!

Anyway, I suppose now MM will unendorse Obama?

That, though, would involve MM stepping down from the Chair of Peter, and confessing that his opinions are not Church teaching.

I can’t?

The US bishops are our spiritual shepherds, commissioned to provide us with the living teaching of Christ on earth. However, when they provide their prudential assessments in regards to public policies, those assessments are as good as (and no better than) their knowledge and abilities in regards to those topics.

In this case, I do not think that their assessment is very good. So while I hold them in the highest respect and submit my will to them in all matters of faith and morals, I simply don’t find these few mentions of theirs in regards to handgun control to be compelling.

In re driving as such — I’m not surprised that you want to err on the side of regulation in this as in all things. Though heck, why stop at eighteen. Unmarried people have far more car accidents than married ones, so why not ban them? Poor people, minorities and immigrants also have far more accidents. Would you ban them as well? With driving as with many other things, there are benefits that must be weighed against the costs. Allowing the young and other high risk groups to drive allows them to hold jobs, help with family duties, provide emergency assistance, etc.

By the same token, allowing responsible citizens to own weapons allows them to protect against crimes and civil unrest in the absence (all to frequent in large cities and in times of trouble) of police officers. Just as I feel safer knowing that in most cities off duty police officers are required to carry concealed weapons so that they can intervene in case of a crime, I also think it provides true social value for those responsible citizens who live in a neighborhood and possess the training and expertise to use weapons to own them. No one is in a better position to protect a neighborhood than those who live in it, know it, and care about it.

Second, it is fallacious to compare guns with things like toilets or bathtubs. Handguns are designed with the purpose to shooting a piece of lead into a person’s flesh. Do they have another purpose (I suppose you could point to shooing at targets, but that’s a stretch!). Their availability contributes directly to a culture of death, especially in an atmosphere where they are idolized (as they are in popualr culture).

Given that only about 1-2% of handguns manufactured are ever used in a crime at all, much less actually place a piece lead into a persons flesh, that seems like a reach. Most handguns are indeed used for target practice, and kept for possible use in defense of self, family and neighborhood.

I do agree that we need to drastically change the glamorization of violence in our culture. If the bishops want to start at home, I think they might consider refusing Christian burial (or at least public funerals) to gang members who are killed in crime related violence. And I have no problem with vastly higher penalties for anyone who commits a crime with a gun. (Though as I recall, the bishops are against hanging all murderers in the public square, so we can’t go that far, I’m afraid.)

A stretch? Says who? I’m not a regular shooter, but every time I have ever used a handgun has been for the purpose of target shooting, and the same is true of every person I have ever known who has ever used a handgun. Target shooting is fun, for the same reason that people like to shoot arrows, or shoot a basketball at a hoop, or kick a soccer ball into a goal, or hit a golf ball towards the hole, or many other examples. I’m sure there’s probably an evolutionary psychology explanation for this, but it just seems to be innate — humans like to aim something at a target.

As to yor other poont, a couple of responses. First, the public authorities do indeed have the right and duty, in the name of the common good, to regulate these matters. As for driving, I certainly believe in should be restricted to 18-year olds, with more stringent controls on drunk driving and the use of cellphones while driving. And it is for this reason I think Ralph Nader’s people have done incalculable good over the years. Of course, laissez-faire liberals would great exception to these suggestions, which is the point, I think.

Second, it is fallacious to compare guns with things like toilets or bathtubs. Handguns are designed with the purpose to shooting a piece of lead into a person’s flesh. Do they have another purpose (I suppose you could point to shooing at targets, but that’s a stretch!). Their availability contributes directly to a culture of death, especially in an atmosphere where they are idolized (as they are in popualr culture).

Well first of all, if you meant to say, “I think it would be most prudent to ban handguns” you should have said that, rather than saying that it was a matter of “Church teaching”.

Secondly, it’s pretty clear that the case only seems like such a slam dunk to you because you see little positive good in gun ownership — whether in regards to recreation or to just use in self defense. Thus, this seems like an obvious one to you — and yet you do not, so far as I know, demand that we ban those under 20 and over 70 from driving, or ban alcohol, or ban families with children under three from owning buckets, toilets and bathtubs, or impose a national speed limit of 45mph — despite the fact that all of those would result in avoiding large numbers of deaths each year.

Given the incredibly tiny percentage of guns that end up being used in murders of suicides, and the large percentage which are quite successfully used for recreation or security, you can hardly be incredulous if others who do not have a reflexive hatred or fear of guns (which are, after all, inanimate objects) come to different prudential conclusions than you do.

Very often, our senses of judgement and justice tell us that we should not go where the statistics tell us. After all, if we really wanted to do exactly what the stats say, we would ban poor people and minorities from owning any guns, and make them perfectly legal for everyone else. But we all know that would be disgustingly unjust.

The “Catholic teaching” involved has to do with the immorality of assault, suicide and murder — not with the legality of handguns.

But it seems to me that the question of whether handgun ownership should be legal is not only not a matter of Catholic teaching, but by its nature can not be a matter of Catholic teaching.

One could, I suppose, claim that it was a moral issue based on the need for the positive law to mirror divine law, but no one has suggested that owning or using a handgun is inherently evil. Rather, it has simply been suggested that limiting the ownership of handguns might mitigate the practical evils resulting from the sins of assault and suicide.

There is certainly nothing inherent in Catholic teaching to suggest that either the ownership and use of handguns in general, or their presence in modern society for personal and family defense, is a grave moral evil. And it is frankly either foolish or disingenuous of MM to suggest that it is.