{Warning: Strong words}

I’m just going to lay it out here.

I was raised in a Republican based mindset. Obviously, I went my own way, but there were times in my life, even after I became a progressive liberal, where I stood up for Republicans and the @GOP.

Not all their ideas were terrible. There were a few which could actually help people (Like TN — a red state — giving two free years of college to all TN residents), but this crop of Republicans are not the Republicans from the past.

Republicans are no longer the party of Lincoln. They have sworn allegiance to the far-right base of the @GOP and they are the party of Trump.

I will no longer listen to the excuses and dumbshit I’ve heard my entire life. I’ll no longer be nice and shake my head politely when a relative or distant friend says something racist or stupid about LGBTQ. I will call each and every one of them out for the stupidity they preach.

This goes for common-sense gun regulations. Don’t come at me with some bullshit excuse that common-sense gun regulations do not work. — All you have to do is look at Europe and Australia. — It works fine for them, so obviously, laws work.

We can come together to try a few things;

1. More money to help patients with mental illness
2. Go back to Obama era policies banning the severely mentally ill from purchasing firearms.
3. Better acknowledgment of serious incident reporting by FBI
4. Military, FBI, and other agencies actually talk to one another and create one “no gun buy” database.
5. Everyone must wait 7 days from order to pick up of a gun.
6. Background checks on everyone who purchases a gun
7. Middleman to facilitate person to person sales and registration of guns (just like cars)
8. Zero bump stocks unless someone can prove a disability who cannot pull a trigger . — If anyone other than the rightful owner is caught using the bump stock, they will be jailed.
9. Get rid of all AR15s. No one, outside the military and police, needs an AR-15.
10. All weapons must be registered. Period!
11. All gun owners must go through training (except military, veterans, and police). If you’ve been using a gun for an extended period of time or you are a military veteran or police, you can “test-out” but this will include watching a film on gun safety and the aftermath of gun violence.
12. If you own a weapon, it must be part of your homeowners’ insurance. If your gun is used to harm another person (even if it was stolen) your home insurance must pay for the physical and mental damages of those affected. If you do not own your home, you must obtain separate gun insurance to ensure the expense of damages to others will be recovered by the victims and families.
13. All items of expense will be limited to an amount which is fair. Americans will have the opportunity to own at least 3 weapons if they wish. After three guns, the price of expenses (registration and ins) will go up drastically with the number of guns a person or family owns.
14. If you can’t afford these items, you can’t own a gun.

These are just a few of the minor changes we can make as a society to decrease deaths and mass shootings (I’ll probably add more soon). Will it eliminate all deaths? No. Of course not. Not all baby seats prevent baby deaths, but it’s against the law to carry your baby anywhere without one.

No law eliminates all crimes. Laws are created to decrease crime and make crime harder to commit.

Let’s look at exactly what I’m talking about.

I don’t do meth. I’ve never done meth. I don’t plan to do meth. I have no idea how to make meth. But, because some criminals create meth, I’m forced to go to the store and show my ID, and purchase only one box of Sudafed a month for my allergies, and I can only purchase so much per year.

Do people still make meth? YES! Do people still die from meth? YES! But the reason for, what I consider, an insane law, is to get as much as the stuff off the streets and hopefully make it harder for meth makers to make a deadly drug. Does it stop all deaths? No. Not even close. But it does help.

The same goes for pain medications. I must suffer greatly because Drs have been ordered to get pain medications off the streets as much as possible to deter criminals from abusing drugs. — Yet, many disabled people suffer daily because they can’t get the pain medications they need daily. All because some fucked up criminal messed it up for the good people who need it.

So, let me tell you something. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you sleep with 50 damn guns to make your penis look longer. I don’t care if you’re never going to hurt anyone with your guns. I don’t give a shit if no lives with you, so no one will hurt anyone either.

If I have to give up my Sudafed (for my allergies) and my pain medications (which I need for many painful diseases), because some uneducated, knuckle dragging, doped up, asshole, decided to almost OD, then, by god, I honestly do not give one shit about your damn AR 15s and bump stocks which are used to murder many, including school children.

If the teens from Parkland are any indication, change is coming. Get used to it.

If you wish to read more about my thoughts on the matter, here is an interview of my opinion and answers to common sense gun regulations, written for Mic.com by Anna Swartz (Twitter — @Anna_Snackz)

https://mic.com/articles/185008/a-gun-owning-military-veteran-explains-why-she-supports-more-gun-control-laws#.L8rettEs4

I hope America will come together and devise some common sense laws that will benefit everyone and keep more people safe. The least we can do is start with bump stocks and AR 15s.

But, if you don’t want to help with progress, and if you’re super sad about losing a few gun rights (and I mean very few), then, don’t worry, I will gladly send you my thoughts and prayers.