"Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay."
-a 15yo autistic girl experiencing ABA therapy
Well, I know the policies they’ve been advocating for. You know like, taking away women’s bodily autonomy. Denying them reproductive healthcare. Taking away the rights and dehumanising anybody who doesn’t conform to their very narrow (and utterly unscientific) ideas of gender identity. Making healthcare unaffordable to the point where live expectancy in the richest country on earth is falling. Letting any idiot buy an assault rifle, leading to countless deaths and a population living in fear. An inhumane and deeply racist prison system. Letting police get away with open blatant murder. I could go on. So pardon me if I think that a “conservative” is a person who simply likes to make other people suffer.
So, I like everything in your post. I also sorta like guns, I also fully believe that something has to change as I’m tired of all the shootings, and of my 26 years alive, we’ve done nothing and there are only more shootings. But, you cannot buy an assault rifle in America. Legally anyway. For the average person. That’s already illegal. If you’re referring to the AR-15, that stands for armalite. The company that makes them.
But other than that, spot on. Especially when it comes to guns though, the people in that community refuse to take anyone talking like that seriously, so if we’re going to have change, in my opinion, you have to do so from another angle. The gun community in America is also massive, shockingly diverse, and only growing. Why do these people feel that they need to take safety into their own hands? I feel like that’s largely the question that needs to be answered there.
Also, I’ll finish this by saying, I own one shotgun, that I’ve had since I was 12 and I’ve never shot it. I’m not a crazy gun enthusiast, but, it is something many people I know take seriously. Oh, and I guess my general politics are reformed conservative? I was raised in the Midwest by conservative parents but every day I wake up more left leaning.