On July 24th, Zachary Wright and his brother Brandon Wright were standing on the sidewalk near their Pratt, Kansas home, when another neighbor, 21 year old Bryant Alan Sebo, began yelling racial slurs at them and told them to get off his property. Since they were standing on a public sidewalk located in their own neighborhood, Brandon Wright confronted Sebo, saying it was his right to be on the sidewalk. According to brother Zachary:

“They started to scuffle. And then the guy got loose and went inside. When he came back out he had a gun in his hand. I said, ‘Run, Brandon, there’s a gun. Run.'”

When another neighbor, Alexandria Duran, heard the fighting she came out of her home to try to get the men to stop. As Sebo came out of the home with the gun, he began firing at them. According to Zachary Wright, his brother Brandon did not run when he saw the gun, instead he turned and tried to shield Alexandria Duran, the woman who had just come outside. Brandon was hit four times in the back. One of the bullets lodged in his spine. Doctors have since said they do not expect him to walk again. His brother also told media that he may also lose the use of one of his hands. Ms. Duran, who was pregnant on the night of the shooting, was shot once in the head. She was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital in Pratt.

Guns kill babies.

In 2001, Isabelle Horon and Diana Cheng published a detailed study in the Journal of the American Medical Association which found

“a pregnant or recently pregnant woman is more likely to be a victim of homicide than to die of any other cause.”

In December of 2004 the Washington Post published a report titled “Many New or Expectant Mothers Die Violent Deaths.”

Their killings produced only a few headlines, but across the country in the last decade, hundreds of pregnant women and new mothers have been slain.

The Post’s analysis showed that killings of pregnant women span all racial and ethnic groups. 67 percent of cases where a weapon was identified in medical or police reports, showed that firearms were used in the murders of pregnant women.

What’s more, guns don’t just kill the unborn, they kill newborns, babies, toddlers, school children, Junior School and High School Children. They kill via suicide, homicide and accidental death. Rarely are guns used to kill the guilty. It is far more likely that a firearm will be used to kill an innocent child, than to stop an intruder or defend against an attacker, contrary to right-wing myths.

The Child Defense Fund publishes an annual report on the number of children affected by gun violence in the U.S. From the 2013 “Protect Children Not Guns” report:

The number of children and teens killed by guns in 2010 was nearly five times the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action that year in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guns killed more preschoolers in one year than they did law enforcement officers in the line of duty. The number of children and teens killed by guns in one year would fill 134 classrooms of 20 students each.

Yesterday I was reading the comments below a photo of young Antonio Santiago, the 13 month old infant, who was shot and killed in Georgia this past March. The photo was being circulated on a facebook page called “Gun Totin’ Republican Kids.” The comment read;

This is a perfect example of the right wing’s amazing ability to look right at a problem and not see it at all. Antonio Santiago – a 13 month old baby – obviously did not buy or own the gun that killed him. There is no evidence to suggest that Brandon Wright’s pregnant neighbor ever bought or owned a gun either, yet it didn’t stop this right-wing racist from murdering her and her unborn child in cold blood, on a sidewalk in her own neighborhood. The kids of Sandy Hook Elementary School never bought a gun, but not buying a gun didn’t equate to “problem solved.”

Right wing extremists are too caught up in preventing women from having safe access to medical treatment to see or care that thousands of “unborn” and “born” babies are being murdered because of them. They’re too absorbed in exhibiting their own moral superiority over women to actually take a real stand when it comes to saving innocent lives. They’ve been shown too many unsourced photos that supposedly detail the horrors of abortion and nowhere near enough photos that show the horrors of gun violence, much less those of war, to even hope to be able to see the real picture of the real “baby killers”. Who are the real baby killers? The doctors performing safe, in many cases necessary medical procedures? The women who terminate pregnancies within their own bodies for either personal or medical reasons? Or the gun nuts, – those who shoot down innocent women and children on a daily basis in this country, all while being protected and defended by the same people who claim to stand for life?

Memorial services for Alexandria Duran are being held at Larrison Mortuary in Pratt, 2 p.m. Tuesday.