“Guns don’t kill people.” We all know the next line and its familiar simplistic argument. Point made, fair enough, even if not fully conceded. Many guns are purchased exclusively for hunting, competitive marksmanship or as collectibles.

The 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, however, is essentially about the right to use lethal force when necessary, and lethal force is all about the ability to take life away from whomever it is employed against. It’s fundamentally about the believed right of people to take another life when they deem it justified for their well being by using the deadly designed purpose that guns so proficiently provide. It’s about the autonomy to decide when the right to life of another is to be taken to protect one’s own threatened personal freedom. It’s also all about personal sovereignty secured against government tyranny.

Those that hold the 2nd Amendment sacred clearly believe in that basic viewpoint and its importance in safeguarding the unalienable freedoms of democratic liberty. Gun ownership guarantees our freedoms.

However, quite often it’s those very same proponents, advocating limited government rule and unlimited access to lethal means to preserve personal sovereignty, that are staunchly pro-life and advocating government intervention in the most personal choice of private well-being that a woman can make.

That paradox is something that commonly gets lost in the political mix, as with the current obstructionist fight to prevent Obama from appointing a Supreme Court justice by those still claiming to be strict proponents of constitutional adherence. Fearing a liberal outcome, conservatives wish to temporarily abort constitutional instruction until circumstances are more favorable towards confirming someone who will best uphold the Constitution’s intent.

Simultaneously taking such contradictory stands should seem a blatant hypocrisy. Should. The trouble with politics and religion, separately, and even more so together, is that both almost inevitably invite hypocrisy. “I say not as I do.” Amen. Please pass the offering plate, or make a campaign contribution.

Those still unborn, unquestionably innocent, have an inarguable right to life while the right to life by fully formed walking talking people is a matter dependent on their conduct. Many people agree with that assertion, maybe most, with unquestioned certitude.

That all life is sacred, always, under any circumstance, is a view hardly anyone honestly believes and rarely practiced outside of a Gandhi or Rev. King. Most Christians continue to employ long standing loopholes of faith to navigate around compliance.

Advocating an armed freedom inherently accepts that life isn’t sacrosanct. It isn’t as inalienable a right as is protecting one’s own personal desire as how to live one’s own life. If one’s mortality is imminently at risk, self defense by lethal force is believed justified. Again, fair enough, for most people. People must have guns to kill people that threaten to kill them. Simple enough.

From there we collectively fast forward to: “Our way of life must be defended at all costs.” The politics of nationalism, patriotism, economics and religious practice has justified the taking of human life over and over, again and again. We are all for killing others to protect our perceived righteous status quo. The threat doesn’t even need to be eminent or evident, only construed as a probability.

History is the endlessly sad saga of rationalizations for using lethal force as an answer to aggression or its possibility. Individually or nationally, no longer does the iconic American Western hero of my boyhood need to be fired upon to return fire. No longer does a policing agent or citizen need to verify a deadly threat to counteract with a lethal response. No longer does America need to be actually attacked for a 911 use of “Shock and Awe’s” indiscriminate destruction.

Why is it that for so many Americans the Second Amendment is the one most treasured? Why do so many people need so much firepower? Why are so many Americans so fearful yet drawn to violent horrific entertainment? Why do so many people want government to force unwanted life into a fearful divisive society that has so little real regard for life? How long will it take until “pro-life” includes all life? How long until animals’ right to life and our planet’s right to life are defended as forcefully as the believed right to carry a means to violent resolution or to dictate the limits of a woman’s autonomy?

For many Americans, politics has become a religion. For others, politics and religion will never be separated. Still, good or bad, Trump and Sanders are strong evidence that major game-changing is increasingly possible. A pro-life vs pro-choice mandate remains unclear, but the time to successfully curtail NRA obstructive politics may well be at hand.

A universal background check initiative will be on this November’s ballot. It’s advocated by those professionals who serve and protect. It’s supported by a majority of gun owners who advocate a strong 2nd Amendment but not a completely unregulated access to arms.

Protecting life by lethal means should be an oxymoron rejected by an enlightened majority. Until then, enacting common sense gun control should be a no-brainer.

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Gary Anderson lives in Bath.