Non-religious Republicans of Lemmy, how do you reconcile your non-religious convictions with a party that bases a lot of its policies on religion?
Non-religious Republicans of Lemmy, how do you reconcile your non-religious convictions with a party that bases a lot of its policies on religion?
E.g. abortion rights, anti-LGBTQ, contempt for atheism, Christian nationalism, etc.
I can only speak for my friends who fit your criteria: they’re single issue voters (like many Americans) and they’re afraid the Dems are coming for their guns.
The dilemma being that anyone who acts this way probably shouldn't own guns.
Placing gun ownership over all other personal freedoms is an unhealthy obsession.
People who think they need weapons in case are not so different than those who think the rapture will occur in their lifetime.
People think they need guns just in case only because so many other people have guns and because our gun violence is out of control.
It's an arms race leading only to more gun deaths.
It's also a delusion for the most part. None of the scenarios they carve out in their minds about why guns are essential tools has much basis in any rational threat profile. Otherwise these nutters would be walking around with helmets on all the time.
I’m not an expert by any means, but I want to say that something similar happened in Australia. Basically, they gave everyone the deal of, say, $500 per gun if turned in voluntarily, or seizure and no money if found. Then they simply restricted ammo sales and eventually the problem fixed itself. (Source: my ass)
Civilian disarmamends happened in various countries, i.e. Australia in 1996/97, UK after the Dunblane school massacre in 1996, Japan post WW2, South Africa in 2000, Colombia in 2000 and 2016, New Zealand after Christchurch.
Strategies and success vary, but it's not unheard of.
Isn't that more or less what happened in Australia after the Port Arthur massacre?
On the other end of the spectrum, Allende basically sealed his fate by disarming his own supporters.
I believe Australia is one such example.
Australia mainly.
They are unfortunately correct. I can’t count how many failed attempts I’ve made to try to convince many of my liberal peers that trying to kill the 2nd Amendment or functionally prevent people from buying guns is doing more harm to our collective efforts than good by alienating independents who are otherwise liberal-leaning, but staunchly support 2A. Many liberals have terrible views about gun violence in general IMO, and a serious lack of comprehension of the problem. Conservatives aren’t much better, unfortunately, and they’re three times as stubborn, so here we are.
Could you elaborate that a bit?
And yet, things like universal background checks and red flag laws poll at something like 80 percent support nationally. Most people are perfectly OK with changing the status quo on gun ownership. The problem is that there is a very determined and highly vocal minority that immediately leaps to "they're coming for our guns!" any time any kind of widely-supoorted common sense gun control measures are even mentioned. The result is that we can't even have a conversation about what said measures should look like so everyone continues to cling to their absolutist positions in ignorance and fear. This is by design and we are suckers for allowing ourselves to be played like this. It's pure manipulation on the part of political opportunists.
If the claim here is that these people would vote straight Blue if the Democratic Party came out tomorrow supporting guns I don’t buy it at all. They’ll move the goalposts. Half the rhetoric they believe about Democrats taking their guns is entirely fabricated to begin with, a large chunk of the rest amounts to paperwork.
Mental health is the issue. Just like anyone who would drive a car through a school yard mowing down kids, that person has mental issues. The vehicles driver should be licensed and the owner should be registered. I am a gun toting liberal in a state with essential zero gun laws. I believe in the second ammendment, but not absolute. You should be able to have a gun, but you should be licensed (psyc eval, background check, gun safety classes requirement) and your guns should be registered. If a gun you own ever kills someone, you are responsible. Your gun is your responsibility to keep locked up and if it's stolen you should have reported it.
My personal stance is is a combination of an observation that an armed population is harder to oppress, and that gun control tends to have a disproportionate impact on minorities and oppressed groups.
Since LGBT and minorities are the most likely groups to be attacked by political opposition, we shouldn't be trying to hamstring their ability to defend themselves.
Plus, a contributing factor to why the alt-right and fascists have gained so much ground in the past decade is because of the perception that only the political right has guns, and therefore they think that they'll win in a fight
single issue voters are fucking willfully braindead. Selfish short-sighted fuckers doing the opposite of their civic duty
That and monetary issues. The "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" out there who want to keep R in power so when they finally get rich, they won't have to pay taxes.
These are called dumb fucks in my book
If you go far enough left, you get your guns back.
And get paid for it. The difference is that it is no longer your guns but our guns
In Australia I know a lot of people who vote purely based on how their parents voted. That includes people voting against their own interests and refuse to do any research that might change their minds...
We have that in the US too, there's just a less than subtle rebellion phase that lasts roughly 2.5 presidential election cycles before regressing.
A single issue for their single brain cell.