Abortion safety advocates have a ton of great ideas about how to protect the life and well-being of expectant mothers. Even though the health risk of abortion procedures is essentially zero, these concerned citizens are so dedicated to health and safety that no legislative restriction is deemed too costly or too onerous. In states all across the country, they are proposing and enacting common sense regulations to ensure that abortion facilities are safe and that expectant mothers are afforded every possible protection.

We should be inspired by their efforts and apply the exact same kind of common sense safety regulations to gun sales to ensure that buyers and sellers alike are afforded their Constitutional right to acquire incredibly dangerous killing machines in the safest manner possible. Following are some proposed gun sales legislations, all modeled upon actual abortion legislation, and intended only to enhance the gun industry and ensure the safety of all concerned in gun sales.

The Gun Seller Freedom Act

• 14 states require abortion providers to have an affiliation with a local hospital. Although such affiliations offers no benefit whatsoever, we should likewise require that gun shop owners be formally affiliated with a local police department just to be safe.
• 13 states require that providers have admitting privileges at a local hospital or an agreement with another provider who has admitting privileges. Since guns are far more dangerous than abortions, we should likewise require that gun shop owners have admitting privileges at a local hospital as well.
• 38 states require an abortion to be performed by a licensed physician. Similarly, we should require that all gun shop staff who sell guns should have to take a 4 year training course and complete a supervised apprenticeship of at least 3 years. After they pass a multipart examination, they may apply to a government-appointed board for a sales license.
• 18 states require the involvement of a second physician after a specified point in the process. We should likewise require that a second licensed salesperson assist in every gun transaction.

The Gun Store Patriotism Act

• 22 states have onerous but according to them, essential, licensing standards for abortion clinics that are comparable or equivalent to the state’s licensing standards for ambulatory surgical centers. We should put in place equally stringent licensing standards for gun stores and require meticulous enforcement by the ATF.
• 21 states specify the size of the procedure rooms and/or specify minimum corridor widths. We should likewise require that all gun store facilities meet minimum size standards to ensure a safe environment with sufficient evacuation capacity in the event of an event. To ensure safety, all walls and windows should be certified to withstand high-velocity sustained gunfire using the most penetrating ammunition available in the store.
• 10 states require abortion facilities to be within some minimum distance from a hospital. We should likewise extend this protection to gun shops since they have far more potential for catastrophe.
• 17 states extend regulations to sites where medication abortion (handing out a pill) is provided, even if surgical abortion procedures are not. We should likewise apply all the same gun shop protections to all stores that sell cap guns or BB guns.

The Gun Buyer Defense Act

• 28 states require a woman seeking an abortion to wait a specified period of time, up to 72 hours, between counseling and the procedure itself. 14 of these states have laws that effectively require the woman make two separate trips to the clinic to obtain the procedure. We should apply these same common sense protections to gun purchasers.
• 17 states mandate that women be given counseling before an abortion that includes information on at least one of the following: the purported link between abortion and breast cancer, the ability of a fetus to feel pain or long-term mental health consequences for the woman. None of this information is actually true, but the abortion safety advocates care so much about women that they want them to be aware of even imaginary risks. We should likewise require gun stores to provide pre-sales counseling to ensure that purchasers are made aware of the potential adverse consequences of their gun purchase decision.
• 28 states mandate that an abortion provider perform an ultrasound on each woman seeking an abortion and requires the provider to show and describe the image, or offer the woman the opportunity to view the image. We should likewise require that prospective gun purchasers be shown images of gunshot victims and require that salespersons describe the horrendous gunshot wounds in graphic detail.

The Firearms Integrity Act

• 4 states require the abortion drug mifepristone to be provided in accordance with the outdated FDA protocol rather than the simpler evidence-based protocol that has been proven to be safe and effective. We should likewise require that sales of any model gun be forced to comply with all safety regulations relating to a Revolutionary War era muzzle loader.
• 18 states require that the clinician providing a medication abortion be physically present during the procedure, thereby prohibiting the use of telemedicine to prescribe medication for abortion remotely. Likewise all mail order or internet sales of guns should be prohibited.
• Nearly all states limit the gestational age limit for the procedure. We should likewise limit the size of guns sold to the first trimester of gun and magazine size as there is some anecdotal evidence that guns with more than a 6 bullet capacity have some level of self-awareness.

We owe a great debt of thanks to all those dedicated abortion safety proponents for championing these important protections for expectant mothers.  We should join them in solidarity by proposing and passing similar common sense protections for prospective gun owners.

ADDENDUM

I’ve just become aware that at least one great legislator, Missouri State Representative Stacey Newman, has introduced HB 1397 which is exactly along these lines (see here). As of this moment a hearing on this bill is not scheduled, but keep at it Stacey!!