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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

>I remember when it was presumed that Conservative meant protector of individual freedoms, rights.

Presumed by whom? I've always understood Conservatism to be explicitly Christian in its ideology, opposed to womens' rights, "non-traditional" sexual orientation and gender identity, abortion, multiculturalism, pornography, modern art, rock music, drug use and a litany of other things. The freedom to think and act outside of the box of "traditional American values and culture" has rather more often been championed by progressives and leftists.

Conservatives do support the individual freedom to own a gun, though. For individuals of a certain phenotype.

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> Conservatives do support the individual freedom to own a gun, though. For individuals of a certain phenotype.

Which is funny, right? Their whole justification was to fight back if the government becomes authoritarian, when it turns out they love an authoritarian government that enforces their values.

There're more than one justification given. Gun rights supporters, like the Republican party itself (and the Democratic party too, of course), are a coaltion of different interests, and not all self-described convervatives would consider gun rights to be an important issue. Some people support gun rights for self-defense, others for hunting. Really it's only the wingnut conspiracy theorists who are silly enough to believe that they could successfully fight back against the modern militarized state.

Hunting is very much a cultural issue, passed down the generations by family tradition, so you'd be hard pressed to change minds on that.

That does not pass the smell test. If the issue was hunting, they would be fine with restrictions on non hunting guns, background checks etc. Hunting is a sound good excuse.

Keep in mind that politicians receive funding from the military-industrial complex and other lobbying groups, so they don't necessarily represent the interests of their constituents.

Except those constituents punish politicians and opposite party when those go against guns lobby. This is not a case of politicians going against what their constituents want.

That's not how money in politics works. Besides, among the issues that are most important to voters, guns are rarely among them.

Legislating them is important, most people with empathy would like the mass shootings to stop, but there are plenty of selfish people without it who don't see it as a problem.

They've even tried to intellectualize dictatorships by rebranding it as "unitary executive theory". They surround it with philosophical reasoning but it fundamentally boils down to "the president should be able to do whatever he wants guys!!!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory

It is ironic that a lot of the gun control laws conservatives rail about in California are a direct result of Reagan’s time as governor with the intent largely to suppress and allow enforcement against black people having guns.

Obamacare is basically a copy of the healthcare system Romney set up as governor of Massachusetts. Republicans running in more liberal states always have to posture a bit to the left in order to have any chance of getting elected, but once they're running on the national stage they can fully move to the right.

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