We Democrats are FAILING TO EMPATHIZE with non-MAGA gun owners and losing CRUCIAL votes because of it.

We (rightfully) accuse Republicans of failing to empathize with us on every issue, all the time. But when it comes to this issue, guns, we are failing in exactly the same way to empathize with people for whom guns are inextricably linked with their identities not just as americans, but as human beings. People who would not have protein in their diet if they couldn't HUNT for it. People who put their life on the line in military service and came away with no skills other than firearms and have used those skills to make a living. People who live in wild hog country and could easily be killed by them if limited to only bolt action rifles or pistols. People who normally would be on our side on gay rights, black lives matter, abortion rights, and they even voted for Joe biden, but in state and local elections they vote for Republicans because of our inability to empathize with the fact that Firearms are integral to their daily lives.

We have to do better.

We could take a very large piece out of their voter base and be able to enact the kind of policies that would actually address the root causes of mass shootings rather than just putting a Band-Aid on them by Banning certain guns or all guns entirely.

Absolutely hate making their argument for them on this, but guns are not the root cause of mass shootings. We have, by far, the largest income inequality Gap in the first world. Direct result of this government the suicide rate is gone up in the past from one in every 8,000 people to one in every five, which works out to about 40,000 suicides each year. And as more unstable people get swept up in the 53%, and rising, of Americans who don't even make basic cost of living, those suicides are increasingly going to come in the form people who want the world to burn, who want to take as many people as possible as the price they see themselves exacting for them being condemned to a hopeless future.

Just as I give them that, I also have to emphasize that it was the Republican Party who has helped corporations kill organized labor for the past Century so that we have no recourse to negotiate for a living wage. Just in the past couple decades, the increase in cost of living has outpaced wage growth by 392% for those of us who are below the corporate upper management level.