The Pro-Life Case for Gun Rights as Civil Protection

The Minnesota tranny shooting is a wake-up call to oppose gun restrictions

(photo source)

On Wednesday, August 27, two children aged eight and ten sat quietly in their pews during morning Mass when Robin Westman opened fire through the church windows. Both were killed. This was not random violence but calculated evil directed at the most vulnerable among us.

The attack raises a profound question that faithful Catholics must confront honestly. Does gun ownership align with Christian values? The answer, grounded in centuries of Catholic moral theology, is unequivocally yes.

Along with the two who were killed, seventeen others were wounded in the attack, including fourteen children and three elderly parishioners. All were defenseless before an armed predator who chose his victims with cold calculation. While secular voices reflexively call for disarmament, Catholics must confront a deeper truth about the duty to protect innocent life.

Saint Thomas Aquinas recognized this truth centuries ago. The defense of innocent life against unjust aggression is not an optional act but a moral imperative. To stand by while the vulnerable are attacked is, in many ways, complicity. The Catechism speaks to this point with clarity, teaching that love of self is a fundamental principle of morality. Human beings are not only permitted but, in certain circumstances, required to preserve and defend their own lives.

When this principle is extended outward, its force only grows. The duty to protect others, especially children, is even more binding than the duty to protect oneself. Children can’t defend themselves. Their lives and futures depend entirely on the courage of those willing to shield them from harm. To deny such responsibility is to deny both natural law and divine command. It is to treat innocence as expendable, which no Christian conscience can accept.

We agree. Unfortunately, the worst gun violence can only be stopped… by people with guns. (photo source)

Evil operates within seconds while help arrives in minutes. Those children had no protection except walls and windows that proved useless against determined malice. Had trained, armed parishioners been present, those young lives might have been preserved when the evil was quickly removed.