34 United States The Economist June 4th 2022
tute (prri) suggest that a comfortable ma-
jority of mainline Protestants and Catho-
lics believe abortion should be legal in all
or most cases (30% of white evangelicals
think it should be legal). This reflects the
teaching of most churches in America.
The Catholic church has long held that
abortion is murder. But since 1967 the Epis-
copal church has maintained its “unequiv-
ocal opposition to any legislation on the
part of the national or state governments
which would abridge or deny the right of
individuals to reach informed decisions
[about abortion] and to act upon them”.
Even the Southern Baptist Convention,
which today roundly condemns Roe, once
called for legislation to allow access to
abortion in some circumstances. It contin-
ued to do until the late 1970s, when Jerry
Falwell, a Southern Baptist televangelist,
and Paul Weyrich, a Catholic strategist, es-
tablished the Moral Majority to mobilise
Christian voters. The success of that move-
ment has obscured an earlier, pre-Roetra-
dition, in which liberal clergy helped
women obtain abortions.
In 1967 a group of ministers in New York
formed the Clergy Consultation Service, to
help women with unwanted pregnancies.
More than 1,000 ministers (and some rab-
bis) became involved in the service, which
referred women to safe abortion providers
across America. After abortion was legal-
ised, several Christian and Jewish groups
established the Religious Coalition for Re-
productive Choice, which the Rev Ragsdale
chaired for nine years.
If Roeis overturned she says she hopes
that “clergy will rise to the occasion again,
getting people to safe places or helping
them find illegal abortions where they are,
taking advantage of medication abortion
to make that possible”. She recognises that
the extreme polarisation that now sur-
rounds the issue will make this a lot hard-
er. “Will I be disappointed? Oh I hope not,
but I fear so.” Many sides to holinessGun advocatesAdjusting
their sights
A
t the annualmeeting of the National
Rifle Association (nra), in Houston on
May 27th-29th, members listened to
speeches and milled around booths, as
they contemplated buying their next gun.
A salesman for Glock, a manufacturer of
handguns, categorised his pistols accord-
ing to the amount of flesh they penetrate:
20 inches (51cm), in the case of the Glock
g40, priced at $750. He hopes his daugh-
ters will soon have the sharpshooting acu-
men to carry one round for self-defence.
A different sort of self-defence is on the
minds of some gun enthusiasts, who are
feeling besieged by efforts to regulate fire-
arms. The nramet three days after an as-
sailant in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 children
and two teachers at an elementary school.
It was the most lethal school shooting
since six- and seven-year-olds were massa-
cred a decade ago at Sandy Hook Elemen-
tary in Newtown, Connecticut. Democrats,
including President Joe Biden, have urged
colleagues to pass laws to regulate gun
sales further. Proposals include restricting
sales of high-capacity magazines, though
their fate is uncertain in a divided Senate.
Gun advocates have shot back at any
new restrictions and stressed other ideas
for preventing mass shootings. Broadly,
they offer four. One is to “harden” schools
so they look more like government build-
ings, with an expanded police presence,
security-screening and a “single point of
entry”, to stop shooters from coming in
through back doors, as happened in
Uvalde. In Houston former president Do-
nald Trump advocated “strong exterior
fencing”. Yet even if all schools could
somehow be “hardened”, a shooter could
still target children in a playground, says
Adam Winkler, of the University of Califor-
nia, Los Angeles, the author of a definitive
history of the right to bear arms.
A second line of argument is that the
only way to stop a “bad guy” with a gun is a
“good guy” with a gun, so teachers, guards
and more people should be armed. Wayne
LaPierre, the nra’s boss, trotted out this
line after Sandy Hook, and it has become as
common and unscrutinised as folklore. “If
guns made us safer, America would be the
safest country in the world,” considering
how many guns are in circulation, says Mr
Winkler. At Uvalde, plenty of “good guys”
with guns were present anyway: at one
point, as many as 19 officers waited in the
hallway to confront the shooter, finally do-ing so more than an hour after he arrived.
(The Department of Justice has launched
an investigation into the police response.)
Gun proponents also argue that the real
culprit in shootings is not guns but mental
disorder, and the solution should be to fo-
cus efforts there. Yet many of the people
who make this point, including Senator
Ted Cruz and Governor Greg Abbott of Tex-
as, have opposed the expansion of Medic-
aid, a government health-care scheme for
the poor, which would provide funds for
mental-health services in the state, says
Mark Jones of Rice University in Houston.
Lastly, “gun rights” proponents argue
that new restrictions would do nothing.
They point to high crime rates in cities
with strict gun laws, such as Chicago. This
ignores the deadly interstate flow of fire-
arms. Most of the guns found in crime
scenes in Chicago are from places with
loose gun laws, says Kris Brown of Brady, a
gun-control organisation.
Gun groups say that no new restrictions
could have avoided what transpired at
Uvalde. But Uvalde is, in fact, a “difficult
case for the pro-gun groups”, says Mr Jones
of Rice: if Texas limited sales of rifles to
those 21 and over, instead of 18, the assail-
ant would not have been able to buy two as-
sault rifles within a week of his 18th birth-
day, one of which he used in the massacre.
Mr Jones predicts that Republicans in
Washington are going to be “under in-
creasing pressure” to raise the minimum
age to 21 for gun purchases.
Families of the victims in Uvalde will
certainly push back against the anti-gun-
control arguments of the nraand the poli-
ticians it funds. Youth marches are
planned for June 11th in Washington, dc,
and across the country. Too many lives
have been upended by firearms. After the
nraconvention your correspondent head-
ed by Uber to Houston airport. Her driver
mentioned he was going to a funeral: his
brother had accidentally shot himself. HOUSTON
Gun groups have ideas for halting mass
shootings. None involves gun controlA wall-builder who also loves fences