It's Time to Ban Handguns: The Comments Earlier this week I argued that the time had come to ban handguns. I copied that blog entry onto my DailyKos page and got a whopping 187 comments. DailyKos is a mainstream lefty blog but the vast majority of the replies were negative. Some argued that if we ban guns, we should ban alcohol too; others went further off-track and argued that, as part of the 2nd amendment, citizens should be allowed to own advanced weaponry such as missiles and bombs in addition to guns. Let me make one thing clear that I obviously didn't in my original post. My argument is more of a moral and thought based one than a pragmatic, realistic one. I for one know for certain that handguns will never be banned within my lifetime. The forces on the other side are simply too powerful to overcome. Most of the attacks I received centered around the fact that if Democrats try and ban handguns, we'll be finished as a political party. I agree. I'm not advocating Democrats take up this position; I am just using my morals and knowledge of the law to forward a legitimate opinion. People's attacks on my free speech are quite troubling. Under the logic of my attackers, no one should have questioned slavery in 1800 because it would "finish" the Whigs as a political party. But I'm not advocating the Democrats adopt my position, I'm just advocating that we should, we must, we need to have this debate. It may be a loser in 2005, but our intellecutal sparring today could very well fix the laws in 2055. It is immoral of those to assail me simply for making a valid point. Check out the full comments here. Here are some selected comments I received: we need to get much better at enforcing our laws before writing new ones. that said if we collectively made firearms illegal ( exempting museum use ) I'd be ok with that. I don't need them I just like them. they are interesting historical pieces and target shooting is fun. standard response to the 'guns are defensive' statements. sorry, as a well trained combatant by the military I can tell ya that if you carry a gun you most likely (~70% ) just armed your assailant; you also are more likely to escalate things. so no they aren't :P . . . My sister worked in an exchange program for japanese students wanting to learn english in the US. one of the students went trick-or-treating, dressed as john travolta ala saturdaynight fever. evidently a paranoid man with a gun started gesturing to the kid to stop proceeding onto his property, but the kid did not understand english enough to understand, and just thought the man was fooling around, because it was Halloween. The man shot the kid and killed him as he walked up to the front door. . . . The Supreme Court has never agreed with your interpretation of the Second Amendment. This strikes me as strange, though, since the clause clearly pertains to "a well regulated Militia." No fair, all you people trying to compare guns with alcohol, automobiles, doctors, and whatever else you have. By your logic, crack cocaine should be legal, since it kills less people than automobiles. The diarist's point is a cogent one: guns are manufactured for the purpose of shooting, and in the case of handguns, to shoot other people. Keep apples to apples. Statistics involving the negligence of gunowners are not a convincing argument against gun ownership. If anything, they're a convincing argument against stupidity. I have yet to see any statistics showing that gun ownership cuts down on violent crime. Policemen I know tell me that people who carry guns for protection are more likely to be shot, in their experience. The root of the crime problem isn't guns - it's people. People will kill each other with baseball bats, if it comes to that. . . . A troll is someone who posts something to the net (originally newsgroups) in order to get people to respond and look stupid. It's modeled after the "trolling" technique of fishing, where they put out a line and move their boat along slowly waiting for a fish to bite. Basically, the guy that posted this intended to start controversy and arguments, and is probably sitting behind his computer jacking his **** off and laughing while seeing all the arguments he created here. . . . I decided against participating on this board after seeing all these posts where people defend gun ownership for hunting and target-shooting - AFTER bonds specifically qualified what s/he said in the diary. If people are going to handle the discussion like that, on purpose, forget it. Maybe a lot of folks here are correct and there is just too much of a national fixation on guns for such policies to be implemented, or for the matter to even be discussed properly. . . . Handguns.... Not Guns... Handguns Does anyone else see the distinction??? Just thought I would ask.... . . . why not missle launchers? How can you be serious about a revolution without access to modern weaponry? . . . The original post was made by Karl Rove.