I was pleased to see my friend Reverend Rob Schenck as a featured columnist in The Washington Post. However, I disagree with his column entitled, “I’m an evangelical preacher. You can’t be pro-life and pro-gun.”

I have known Rev. Schenck for nearly forty years. He is a friend and has long been one of my heroes. His courageous defense of our first neighbors in their mother’s womb has inspired me in my work to defend the Fundamental Right to Life for all persons from conception to natural death for decades. I have defended him in Court in years past as he has courageously stood up for those who have no voice but ours. I have also assisted him in several fruitful efforts in which he has engaged in vibrant ministry on Capitol Hill.

However, on the issue of gun ownership, we disagree. My ministry experiences, along with what Rev. Schenck referred to as “careful theological and moral reflection” have led me to the opposite conclusion. In fact, I recently learned how to use a gun and took classes to obtain a conceal carry permit.

For two thousand years, Christian theologians and ethicists have recognized self-defense and the defense of others as a moral right and even, at times, an imperative, under the rubric of “just war.” This right does not contradict the pro-life cause, but undergirds it. After all, to be pro-life is to believe that innocent human life should be protected by law and government power from destruction at the hands of others. To be pro-life involves, in part, a commitment to the just use of arms and police power.

Pacifism also finds a home within Christian history. I do not know whether Reverend Schenck is walking down that path but, if he is, and he embraces its claims, I will not object. He will have my respect though not my assent.

I do, however, object to the implication that those who disagree with him are motivated by vengeance. No evangelical protestant leader I know wants to use a gun on another human person. Rather, they believe there is a right to self-defense and the defense of others and they want to be prepared.

That’s the real right at issue. In the title of his editorial, Rev. Schenck frames the issue incorrectly, “You can’t be pro-life and pro-gun.” In the opening sentence, he goes further by claiming that “in the United States, evangelicals are among the biggest supporters of gun rights.”

I fear that Rev. Schenck is falling prey to a verbal engineering tactic. Guns have no rights. People have rights. And one of them is the right to defend yourself, your family, your property and your neighbor. The controversy takes on an entirely different cast if it is framed correctly. How plausible is it, after all, to argue that being pro-life is inconsistent with believing in the right to defend oneself and others? Using phrases such as “pro-gun” and “gun rights” are simple misdirections.

Ironically, a similar verbal trick has been used to undermine the right to life which Reverend Schenck has spent his life defending! The phrase “abortion rights” was manufactured by cultural revolutionaries who oppose the right to life. Abortions, however, have no rights; only human persons do. To claim that a person has a “right” to an abortion contradicts our first right — to life — on which all other rights are based. Every procured abortion involves the intentional killing of a defenseless child. A “right” to procure an abortion, then, would be a “right” to violate the most basic right of another human being. This is sheer nonsense, and subverts the very foundation of our rights. So abortion defenders speak confusingly of “abortion rights.”

Rev. Schenck falls into a similar confusion, perhaps inadvertently, when he speaks of “gun rights.” This might not be so important except that it reflects a verbal confusion emerging in the debate over the right to defense delineated in the Second Amendment. President Obama has already announced that he will use executive orders to further limit this Constitutionally-guaranteed right, and we can be sure that he will be imprecise in his use of “rights.”

So let’s remind ourselves of the words of the Second Amendment. “A well-regulated Militia,” it reads, “being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Notice the language: It refers to the right of “the people.” The right to self defense is vested in us — not in those objects we use, if and when it may be necessary. A gun is simply one of the means we may have to use in this effort.

Though this right to defense is pre-political and based on the natural law, we should be thankful that this natural right is recognized in American law. And we should be zealous in defending it against those who would use verbal legerdemain to undermine it.