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Like any piece of property, a child has value to conservative activists. They are key to a future the conservative wants to win. Parental rights are merely one path to the total capture of state power and the imposition of an authoritarian hierarchy on us all. So it’s no surprise that children have long been a fixation to the right wing. …

At Salon, the journalist Kathryn Joyce reported that Michael Farris — a Trump ally who is the former president of the Alliance Defending Freedom and the founder of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association — launched a parental rights nonprofit in the late aughts that sought to amend the Constitution to read, “The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children is a fundamental right.”

Farris also objected, strenuously, to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the U.S. still hasn’t ratified. In his mind, the treaty threatened the parent’s right to homeschool and to use corporal punishment. No intermediary may come between parents and their property. …

Children who work may be exposed to adult dangers, like workplace injury or sexual harassment. In the home and at school, children must also fear gun violence in the name of the Second Amendment. Adults who encourage the proliferation of guns do so knowing well that children will die. In their hierarchy, the adult right to a gun is worth more than the child‘s right to live. Reduced to the level of a collectible or a beloved pet, the child is not a person to the right.

—  Sarah Jones in Children Are Not Property the Idea That Underlies the Right-Wing Campaign for “Parents’ Rights”

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

74 COMMENTS

    • This is just trolling from TTAG – “Sarah Jones” is a no one. Writing for leftwing BS “media”. Of not relevance.

      • Remember that school in Tennessee, where three CHILDREN were shot to death by a deranged “adult” female so mentally twisted SHE was convinced SHE was a he?
        Please note: had even ONE ADULT INSIDE that building when she entered had been armed and skilled, the murderer never wouid have gotten ten feet past the pile of broken glass on the floor from the locked entry door she blasted apart with her firearm, UNLAWFULLY carried into that place.
        There already ARE laws that prohibit her having that gun, and bringing it to the place she brought it, and doing what she did with it. NONE of those laws kept that gun from her murderous hands.

        BUT other “policies” operated to prevent ANY ADULT from lawfully possessing a gu inside that building.

        SO YOU tell ME how all these gun laws “protect the children”. They obviously DO NOT. But could.

        Tennessee has so far banned weapons from public schools, (though I recently read some folks have had their eyes opened by this crime) but allows those in charge in private schools to do as they wish on this matter. THIS school had elected to NOT allow any armed adults at the school. thus NO ONE was in hand to deal with this lethal force intrusion.

        I strongly favour the practice that ALL law abiding adults go abut their daily affairs armed and skilled. Why? Well, for one thing, TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN. People like this nutjob deranged female will not be able to kill them when adults are nearby, armed, trained, and willing to take out threats to the children.
        even more I also strongly favour training children from very young to properly safely and accurately handle firearms. I’ve read a number of accounts of yung children (as young as six) using firearms to save the lives of adults around them, and children as well. don’t believe me? Then do some research. Those accounts are out there.

        • Absolutely correct! Mature, caring adults should be as prepared as possible to protect children, other loved ones and themselves from evil attacks. Evil will always be with us in this life. Many so called adults are too lazy to make the effort to be ready for an evil attack. Because they are lazy, and don’t want others to overshadow their lack of care and competence, they criticize others who are realistically prepared to protect children. This is subtle evil on the part of these lazy, incompetent adult “protectors”. If you aren’t part of the solution to recognize and stop evil, you are committing evil yourself by doing nothing to stop it!

    • Backdoor Gun Control sarah jones must be blind and cannot see what happens to defenseless children and adults. So blind sarah jones wants you to surrender your right and means necessary to defend you and yours.

      Poor sarah jones is so fixated firearms she does not comprehend criminals will criminally misuse anything they can get their hands including the vehicle sarah jones drives. A criminal will use sarah jones’ vehicle to mow down frolicking children like they were bowling pins. A criminal will use sarah jones’ kitchen utensils to carve children up, etc. And of course sarah jones will have to stand by and watch the carnage because sarah jones is as defenseless as those children…Children sarah jones is obligated to defend with her life if necessary.

      No can do sarah jones will I join you in your disgusting quest for Gun Control especially when History Confirms Gun Control in any shape, matter or form is an agenda rooted in racism and genocide.

      • “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” ~ Thomas Jefferson.
        On self defense: If Colt’s pistol made men equal, what is the consequence of gun confiscation? If you fear the night now, just wait until the Democrats take your guns. What are you going to do when the boogieman cometh, ladies? The boogie man will not give up his weapons, and may not need them if he is bigger, faster, or stronger than you. The theory that criminals who are willing to ignore laws against rape, torture, kidnapping, theft, and murder will obey a law which prohibits them from accessing firearms is naïve, and dangerous. I suggest that all the Liberal twits, twinks and sheep who vote Democrat look up what happened in South Africa at the end of Apartheid with the increase in gun control legislation. There has been approximately 7000 murders so far this years (Jan – Mar 2023); that would be 49,000 in the U.S. based on the difference in populations. Think about that you sheep out there ranting for more gun control. It will never be enough, and when the guns are gone you will see real pain and suffering, and you will no longer be a free people, having traded freedom for an illusion, an illusion painted by fools.
        I often wonder what world Liberals live in…it can’t be the same one I live in, or a rational one. Founding Father Joseph Story wrote, “One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms.” And, Lenin said, “We must act with all energy. Mass searches. Execution for concealing arms.” Is that Biden’s ATF knocking at tour door?

  2. Suicide rates finally began declining in 2019 after decades of increasing. Then in 2021, they began increasing again. Shouldn’t we be figuring that one out? Nah, it’ll be fine.

    They’re freaking out because they know parents are onto these weirdos.

    • Teachers out diddling catholic priests both in total numbers as well as per capita didn’t help much either.

    • The suicide rates are really a result of the COVID pandemic and social shutdown, not more guns. (Remember, it is the left that shoved Covid and the shutdown upon us. They created the suicidal situation.

      • PLEASE do NOT mention the 100,000 deaths directly caused by misuse of the drug fantanyl, and often made more lethal because of sloppy mixing and dosing. Most of these deaths are suicides of people wanting to check out cause they think their life is not worth living. Even younger childrenare vulnerable to misuse of fentanyl.

        But to shut down this trade, open borders will have to be sealed and guarded, and everything crossing that line be examined. Hundreds of tonnes of fantanyl cross that border each year, much of it along with the foreign nationals illegally invding.
        these fraud gun-control freaks can howl at the moon all they want, but until they begin advocting strongly for secure borders, they’ll get not one nanogramme of sympathy OR agreement from me.

    • Bit of projection mixed in re “total capture of state power and the imposition of an authoritarian hierarchy on us all” as well.

      • Leftist SOP: accuse your opponents of doing that of which you, yourself, are guilty.

  5. Good grief.

    Try this on for size Miss Jones.

    Whenever a civilization accepts women’s and homosexual rights, that civilization is about to fall. This has been proven time and time again, and the evidence fills the historical record. The 1960s was the beginning of the end in this country, and the wider Western world.

    Prepare accordingly.

  6. Humans, as energy beings,can imagine and realize their own realities. Imagine something, and it becomes a fact. Examples:

    Fact: No child’s life has ever been saved through the use of a firearm.
    Fact: Firearms cause global warming.
    Fact: Electricity is free when you generate it through sunlight.
    Fact: When a man says he is a woman, he turns into a woman.
    Fact: Even though you are spending more than ever on groceries, inflation is not an issue.
    Fact: The more migrants allowed to enter the USA illegally, the lower the cost-per-capita to support them.
    Fact: People immigrate to the USA because they want to live in a racist, homophobic, child-grooming culture.
    Fact: The government knows what is best for you and your children.
    Fact: the IRS is hiring 80k new agents because they want you to have maximum tax return.
    Fact: Free speech impinges on personal freedom.
    Fact: The hottest rock band in Israel is Guns and Moses.

    Imagine your own facts and make them come true!!!

    • Inflation is part of the issue. Corporate price gouging is the *real* issue. Otherwise the food companies and food markets would not be posting record profits

  8. people like that need to be chot. there is no fixing them and no convincing them to leave the rest of us alone.

    • Yep, here’s another poster on TTAG who expresses their desire to kill their political opponents.

      “I would never say that in public
      April 11, 2023 At 09:16
      people like that need to be chot.”

      • MINOR Miner49er, Anyone who tries to assault another with a weapon deserves whatever is called for. If that means shooting the bad guy, that’s not “murder”. Its self defense, which I am sure you are against.

  9. My son’s are not state property. Well maybe my war hero son was for 8 years in the army. This is one dumb Sarah🙄

    • Unfortunately you are wrong on this, once you have signed the papers to enter any branch of military service, they own you for life. If you are discharged, retired, have DD214, whatever, you can be recalled to active duty at any time. It’s not very often it happens, but it can.

  10. But we’re okay with their elementary school helping them decide which sex they would like to be. Nope, nut a fucked-up group at all.

  12. The destruction of parental rights are merely one path to the total capture of the state’s power and the imposition of an authoritarian hierarchy on conservatives.

    In the liberal hierarchy, the left’s right to an abortion is worth more than the child‘s right to live.

    FIFYYSC!

  13. “Jones: Adults Who Promote Gun Rights Do So Knowing It Means Children Will Die”

    100% lie.

    • .40 – I wonder if this ‘person’ (I’m presuming ‘it’ is a real one and not an AI construct) realizes that more children are killed during domestic ‘situations’ annually than in all of the school massacres combined.

  14. “…children must also fear gun violence in the name of the Second Amendment.”
    kids don’t have to fear much if their guardians are armed.
    “…the adult right to a gun is worth more than the child‘s right to live.”
    the guardians right to protect their charges is worth everything.

    • But the adult’s “right” to live their life unencumbered by actually raising a child is paramount…right up until the child sees the light of the delivery room (or even longer in the more benighted parts of the globe), until then they’re just a “mass of cells” or some such rot…

    • Under the 2nd Amendment, children must fear that there are evil people in the world who, wish them harm. Without the 2nd Amendment, children must fear that there are evil people in the world, who wish them harm, and who wield absolute power in the name of the State.

      • Without the 2nd Amendment those children live in a world where their parents are pretty much helpless to protect them and the safety of their home totally depends on how far away the doughnut shop is.

  15. Adults who promote eating food, know using forks will make you fat. You must promote banning forks, you know “for the children.”

  16. This sounds like it was written by Dacian.

    The truth is that children are going to die regardless. There isn’t a human alive on this planet that can stop that. Death comes to us all.

  18. Parents have rights in making decisions on behalf of their children, not because their children are property, but because society recognizes them as the ones best suited, by their moral duty as parents, by the emotional bonds of parenthood, and by their direct knowledge of their children, to see to their children’s best interest.

    The opposite model, where the state has the primary role of seeing to the best interest of children, has been tried before – such as in the notorious Romanian orphanages of the Cold War era. That model has been an unmitigated disaster everywhere it has been tried.

  20. My kids aren’t property. What they are is mine and my wife’s responsibility. Because we made them. It’s my job to educate my children, schools are merely a tool to assist. It’s my job to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for my children.

    This woman knows that conservatives are more likely to have children than liberals. She knows that conservatives are more likely to have a nuclear family. And she knows that children growing up in nuclear families are more likely to be successful in life than children from broken homes. This means that unless Democrats can indoctrinate your kids, or strip them from you, they cannot control the future of the political landscape.

    George Takei once said “I love straight people. They keep making new generations of gay people. Same concept here. Liberals don’t have children at the same rate as conservatives and those they DO have are far more likely to end up criminals or single parents.

    She’s not upset that Conservatives think children are property. She knows that’s not the case. She’s upset that she can’t TREAT your children like property and take them away from you.

    • Wonderfully articulated and very much observed reality up here unless you homeschool and see the point even more clearly.

      • I think the biggest advantage to public schooling is learning social skills. But a formal education is only part of teaching your children how to be successful. You may send your kids to school, but they’re not a free babysitter. The school may provide lunch, but that doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility to feed your kids. If your child is struggling in school, it’s your job to help them grasp concepts or at least provide a tutor.

        I have my kids in seasonal sports, I have my kids learning instruments, I have my kids learning additional languages, I’m teaching my kids how to cook and clean, they are already proficient with gun safety, I’m constantly teaching them conflict resolution. I think these things are important. When the time comes, I’ll teach them how to apply for jobs, file taxes, manage a budget, be a good partner for a future spouse, etc. Schools don’t require these things to graduate, but they’re every bit as important (or more so) than geometry.

        This idea that I must think of my kids as property is sooo foolish. Its as foolish as the idea that generally, strangers will do a better job raising children than biological parents will. Yes, there are some terrible parents. But picture how much worse they’d be if the children weren’t even theirs.

  21. It also means people working in the firearms industry will make money to support their children and families.

  22. The Anti-Gun media and radicals don’t care about anyone’s life. This movement is all about CONTROL of the people. Not safety.

  23. lol, the *right* is using education for authoritarianism? that’s a great one. What a buffoon.

  25. The correct statement is that leftists hate children. They use them as wedges between parents and government.

  26. Yes, kids who work in businesses or farms can and do sometimes get hurt. Kids who are living in crap parts of most of our larger cities are at risk for violent actors doing them harm. Usually other young people who can’t legally purchase or carry weapons. The greatest threat to young inner city black men is other inner city young black men.
    A lack of discipline and a lack of adult supervision or being taught basic morals usually is the cause. No responsible adult male role model. A culture of violence and drug use. No positive reinforcement or encouragement. No consequences for poor decisions or immoral behavior. And, now the politicians and self proclaimed experts demand we turn our children over to them to raise and indoctrinate.
    Sorry lady but this is not going to happen as long as I can prevent it for my family. Sure, they may win and may eliminate me. But I will happily send a few on the road to hell ahead of me.

    • “Yes, kids who work in businesses or farms can and do sometimes get hurt.“

      But that’s just part of growing up, right?

      “GOP’s Idea of Youth: Little League? Proms? Try Working in a Slaughterhouse and Marrying at 10”

      “Arkansas Governor and Republican Party darling Sarah Sanders joined presidential hopeful and New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu in actually signing a pro–child labor bill into law. The law eliminates what a Sanders spokesperson termed a “burdensome” requirement for the state to verify the age of anyone age 15 or 16 who seeks employment. The law’s chief sponsor, Republican state legislator Rebecca Burkes, said the requirement “steps in front of parents’ decision-making process about whether their child under 16 years of age can get a job.” Uh, that’s why it was enacted back in 1914: because too many parents were sending their kids out to work rather than allowing them to attend school.”

      https://newrepublic.com/article/171308/gop-child-labor-laws-slaughterhouse

      • Wow. I mean, if a hyper partisan article claims that 10 year old marriage is an issue supported by the GOP, it MUST be true. Plus, it accuses conservatives of being pedophiles. I guess that’s proof we should let liberal strangers take our kids? We can have the kids stuff bills in the thongs of drag queens and genitally mutilate 7 year olds like you sick, degenerate Democrats want?

        As for working, I had summer jobs when I was 13. I don’t see the problem there. This idea that your child can’t learn some responsibility for work until they’re over the age of 18 is ridiculous.

        You are a clown.

      • MINOR Miner49er. God, your buddies do know how to twist words to fit your Lefty Agenda.

  29. Children are “property”… Perhaps, in the sense that they are not fully invested with the rights and privileges of adulthood. They are in the care and protection of their parents until the age of majority. There’s no two ways about it; kids are either raised by their parents OR by government… Unfortunately too many kids are raised by neither because many are having kids outside of a loving family environment, and government cannot provide a family environment..

  30. Projection as always: “ children have long been a fixation to the right wing”. No, the gender craziness is purely the left corrupting children to separate them from parents and overall disrupt the nuclear family structure.

  31. I strongly support gun proliferation with the absolute knowledge that kids and other innocents will die. However, I also know that many more will die if the good guys are denied guns.so that only bad guys and cops have them. Even without guns, most people can’t defend themselves again rudimentary edged and impact weapons or simply a stronger attacker.

    Cops simply can’t respond in time — it’s physics, not incompetence/cowardice, but that happens too. There’s around 1 cop per 1000 people in most non-rural areas. Imagine you hear your neighbor calling for help, whether in the next apartment or the next house. Assuming you’re home carrying and willing to help, how long would it take for you to get there? What if there’s a locked door and you don’t know the layout? How’s that compare to how long it takes for the bad guy to inflict serious injury or death? Now add the time for your neighbor to dial 911. Add the time to drive to the scene, and the minutes start to add up.

  32. your children’s euthanization boosters may be due.
    The future of America depends on it.

  33. Our founders, correctly, opted for dangerous freedom over safe tyranny.

    The cost of freedom is risk. Freedom is worth the cost.

  34. Why isn’t jones complaining about brandon’s open door policy that has allowed hundreds of millions of drug into the country killing thousands? Not counting the endless illnesses these illegals are bringing into the country overwhelming the medical systems of the southern states? There are somewhere about 3-5% of the country that are mentally ill So, there is always going to be wackos out there willing to have their names in the media for any ill gotten deed they can do. CA has the strictest law in the country dealing with guns and they have FAILED to do anything to the crime ridden liberal run state. Like chicago, they got rid of a dumb do-nothing mayor and elected a bigger fool to take her place. As long as the country continues to elect fools and idiots (starting at the current squatter at 1600 pa. ave. and the hoe for v.p. (and a.o.c. and the other lying p.o.s. republican) we will be heading in the directing of staying in the toilet we are currently living in.

  36. MORE KIDS SAVED BY GUNS THAN KILLED BY GUNS . OK
    I NEED MY RIGHTS INCASE KID WANTS TO KILL ME , NEED TO BE ABLE TO KILL BACK .
    HOW MANY KIDS KILLED IN AUTO WRECKS AND HOW MANY SAVED IN AUTO WRECKS WEARING SEAT BELLTS .??

  37. The REAL reason children will die is because of the “gun free zones”(aka, kill zones with little chance of return fire), progressive teachers, politicians letting criminals out of jail that should not be let out, parents that think schools are babysitters and don’t care what happens to their children, progressive politicians that think the government should be running everyone’s life and taxing them to death, and ALL the people who let them.

  39. Having raised two responsible Adult Gun Owners, and currently teaching my Grands to be responsible Gun Owners, I can tell Jones she’s full of Schit.

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