I get the debate over guns as a personal rights issue. Personally I don't want to own a gun and I am more than happy living in a society with low levels of gun ownership, and where most guns in private hands are bolt action rifles. I grew up around lots of guns and I used to own a few myself... but right now I cannot imagine anything that would motivate me to purchase a gun.
I don't see guns as a left vs right issue at all. Our restrictive gun laws were introduced by a right wing conservative government, with bipartisan support. So in supporting restrictive gun laws I'm a centrist in this country.
The idea of guns being a left vs right issue is for one very simple reason. The Republican Party in the US figured out after Reagan's presidency that they could lock up a big chunk of the vote by supporting the most ridiculously unregulated gun rights and painting the Democrats as "those commernists who wanna take yer gerns away". Add to this locking up the fundy / evangelical Christian vote by pretending to be "pro life" (or, more accurately, pro-birth).
Apart from economic policy, in this country the only left vs right issues seem to be around things like marriage equality (which is now done and dusted anyway) and indigenous rights. Immigration is an issue but both parties have basically the same "keep them in concentration camps until they commit suicide" policy with undocumented immigrants who arrive by boat, and both parties support very high levels of legal immigration. Realistically the two major parties are simply different flavours of neoliberalism and general conservatism.
Veganism doesn't seem to be as big of a deal here as it is in the UK. I like meat but I agree that we should generally eat less of it.
Fortunately we have preferential voting, so I vote for any party with "socialist" or "green" in their name and give my preferences to the less bad conservative party.
