Why do so many people vote Republican out of fear of getting taxed more or guns being taken away?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I can see voting Republican if you actually believe that ideology or like a particular candidate.

But it seems like there are a lot of people who single-issue vote for Republican candidates - on issues that don’t even affect them.

Taxes - even Bernie Sanders’ tax plan would not have affected most 95% of Americans. The tax increases were mainly just extra brackets for household incomes over $250,000 per year. And even then, the increase would only be by a few percent unless your household was making more than $2,000,000, which is almost no one (so even if all those people vote uniformly Republican, it probably wouldn’t sway the election).

And Bernie Sanders is on the extreme side of increasing taxes. The reality is though, people are so opposed to taxes, but a lot of the time, the proposed tax increases by Democratic candidates don’t even affect 95% of the people.

And with guns, no Democrat is even coming close to completely “[taking] away” guns. They might tighten up a little on gun control and background checks, which may be unnecessary, but I don’t see how this is an instant deal-breaker.

2

Selfishness, fantasies of wealth, shortsightedness and paranoia. They don’t want to pay their fair share, listen to the manufactured conspiracy theories that never come true about “they’re coming to take their guns”, and don’t consider the actual consequences of their actions.

And in regards to taxing the wealthy, many people have this fantasy that one day* they’ll* be rich and have to pay those higher taxes on the wealthy. Of course, in reality America is one of the least socioeconomically mobile industrialized nations; if you aren’t rich* already,* you are highly unlikely to ever be rich.

3

Wrong. You need to do your research on this. Just because they haven’t succeeded yet doesn’t mean it’s not their objective.

Every gun ban (Washington D.C., Chicago, etc.) was always initiated by a Dem.

Also, every time a democrat says they aren’t going to take away guns it seems it’s always followed by “I just want to ban… [high capacity magazines, “assault weapons” , etc]”. Banning anything IS taking it away. It’s taking away the choice to have it in the future if you so choose.

Just because you don’t want it now is no reason to surrender your right to acquire it in the future. And it gives you no right to prohibit the rest of us to have it either.

4

It doesn’t matter if it’s their objective or not because they haven’t had anywhere near the ability to do so for decades, if ever. The Right has long since won on the issue of guns for the foreseeable future; but victory is never enough for them.

5

See? There’s someone who actually believes that having a gun makes them more free. It’s baloney, but useful for keeping him a slave.
(referring to pkbites )

6

Phooey. One of the few times I post in anger, and the Board locks up on me when I think better of it, so I couldn’t edit it away.

Anyway, my apologies, pkbites; that’s a lot stronger than I mean.

Still, I do believe that personal gun ownership has nothing to do with political freedom, and almost nothing to do with personal safety. Republicans have been preying on fear since the 80s; this is nothing different.

7

But yet they have passed numerous laws that have actually done just that, at least on paper. I gave the examples of D.C. and Chicago and of the “assault weap:rolleyes:ns” ban.

Your post has not a thing to do with the argument of the OP and my response to it and is just an insult to my legitimate response to the OP. In a legitimately moderated board your post, IMHO, would be reprimand.

8

You’re certainly welcome to report it. In fact, I will.

My point is that the Republican party has done a great deal to limit what had been seen as rights by many - Voter ID laws, mass gerrymandering, and so forth - while still championing the individual ownership of guns. I contend it’s because the Republicans realize that the ownership of guns is a pacifier for many of their constituency, allowing the leadership to get away with far more serious curtailments of rights. Gun ownership will do nothing against a tyrannical government in modern America, after all.

9

Agreed. They get people so worked up about guns that they are willing to sacrifice* everything *else for them. They’ve built up this whole fantasy about how important guns are for “defense against tyranny” when they are actually completely useless against tyranny -which is the point of promoting them. Millions of people think they can sacrifice everything from free speech on down but still be “free” as long as they have those guns.

10

George Carlin’s take on this question gives part of the answer.

TL;DL: This.

11

OP - you are missing a huge swath of the population. The so called pro-life (pro-birth really) anti-choice folks. Typically these are very religious folks that don’t NEED any rational reasons for their political stance other than GOD told them so.

You cannot reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into.

12

My entire family doesn’t vote for Democrats because of “socialism”. There is no further discussion than this. Democrats are socialists. Full stop. Data, facts, reason, definitions of socialism, examination of aspects of the US that are already socialist that they support. None of this matters. Democrats are socialists. Socialists are bad.

13

I’ll try to keep this on topic as much as possible, but the sentiment I perceive in the OP applies to more than just guns and taxes so I’m going to touch on a couple of other subjects as well.

Why do so many people vote Republican out of fear of getting taxed more or guns being taken away?

to paraphrase a quote I’ve heard, “I may be paranoid, but I’m still free”
When I look at the history of the world in general, I have no reason to believe that the form of democracy we have here in the US is particularly enduring. I also have no reason to believe that there isn’t a tendency for our government to slowly move towards being more intrusive, controlling and tyrannical. In fact I think I have reason to believe that it has moved that way.

McCain-Feingold is a pretty good example. We hold the right to Free Speech to be amongst the most Sacrosanct of the Rights, alongside Freedom of Religion, and the hotly debated Right to Bear Arms. Most especially the Right to Free Political Speech. We hold that right to be so sacred that we apply it to things that while rightly considered expression, are not, in the strictest sense of the word, speech, or even written speech and are in fact abhorrent and offensive in the extreme to many people (ie flag burning). Yet we also have McCain-Feingold, which limits and infringes free political speech. This act, which has been in place long enough that I no longer remember the justification for its passing, is so … abhorrent… to me, that I believe the people responsible for drafting the bill, the people who thought it was a good idea and sponsored the bill should be banned from ever working in any official government or government related position again.

The ACA, grrr. “We have to pass it to find out whats in it” The way this bill was passed, the things this bill does, the way it does them. How in the world this law was ever found to be constitutional, none of it has never been explained to me in a way that doesn’t ping my bs alarm. All I can see and all I’ve ever experience under the power of this thing is the government moving into my life uninvited, mandating that I purchase something I cannot afford to use after I purchase it in order to protect me from myself, then punishes me for refusing to participate, which in turn makes it even more difficult for me to have what this law is popularly claimed to provide (yet factually does not). ACA is only tangentially related to healthcare, and ultimately, health insurance is just a smoke screen for the government to become even more tyrannical and controlling than it was before.

Taxes. Meh, yeah, I’m for less taxes because some of the stuff you want maybe I don’t want, and don’t feel like paying for, but I’m not too passionate about this one on an overall level.

ETA damn, sorry about that, didn’t mean to rant about all that. I guess those are just the prime examples, right now, of why some of us feel that guns are important, and why government should be kept small and restricted.

14

I had no idea that Bush 43 and Reagan were Democrats.
Obama Signed More Repeals of Federal Gun Policies Than Bush

15

It’s surprisingly difficult to turn up anything definite about the Amtrak bill. But the national park one was an amendment to a bill that was primarily about credit cards. Obama was FORCED to accept that, because he didn’t want to veto the whole thing.

Incidentally, the Amtrak repeal was done in '09 – 7 years ago. Can you point to even one mass shooting on a train?

16

Hey coach, I read the article in your link, do you have any others? Maybe some that link to the reports mentioned in the article? (I don’t know if such a thing exists, I couldn’t find anything, but that doesn’t mean diddley). The links provided in the article all seem to go to other articles by that organization, and I’m looking for something from another, “disinterested party”

17

And I have pointed out their offenses on these boards over the years.

18

I think it has become a symbolic issue. It’s not “I don’t want my taxes go to up”, it’s “taxes are bad, and I oppose anyone who wants higher taxes on anyone or anything.” It’s not “I want to keep my guns”, it’s “gun ownership is a fundamental right, and I oppose anyone who wants to take away guns from anyone.”

19

I know some gun people and they are STUPID!

They believe anything anyone tells them, especially if it is false news. And if you try to correct them about their misinformation, they will argue to the end of the earth that they are correct!

These people watch Fox News and nothing else.

20

While this is pretty much it, the OP and others don’t agree. The OP posted *“no Democrat is even coming close to completely ‘[taking] away’ guns”

  • yet there is no viable argument to my response about gun bans that occurred in Chicago, D.C., etc which were implemented by Democrats, and possible future bans on firearms which are pushed mainly by Democrats. Hillary Clinton did state she was open to Australian gun control (confiscation).

For good or for bad there will probably never be a flat tax in this country because a sizeable segment of the population cannot stand the notion that a gazillionaire pays the same percentage rate as they do, even though the actual amount is incomparable. It seems it’s not about paying a "fair share’, it’s about revenge against someone because they are wealthy.

I wonder if any of them know how to format a convincing argument. Stay classy.