Sometimes you come by an article that's so well-written, so powerful, passionate and intelligent that you just have to keep a piece of it around to remind you what good writing is about. Tom Carter (who disagrees with me more than any other person I know aside from my husband) writes about the necessity of a ban on handguns:
Okay, I’m a realist. I know the public won’t support a federal handgun ban, and I know politicians won’t do it anyway. We’ll continue to see suburban wannabe cowboy heroes with ersatz phalluses strapped to their waists as they shop at Wal-Mart on the weekends. We’ll continue to have people with handguns at home, thinking wrongly that they’re the best weapons for home defense. We’ll continue to have delusional conspiracy theorists armed to the teeth, ready to take on the forces of the NWO when they land their black helicopters in the neighborhood, led by none other than the Antichrist himself. And criminals will continue to prey on us with handguns. Worst of all, we’ll continue to see crazies murdering innocents with perfectly legal handguns. Fine, we can’t outlaw handguns. I get it. But how about banning high-capacity magazines that hold more than 10 rounds so we can’t be murdered so quickly and efficiently? No? I figured as much.
Irrespective of whether you agree with his views (which I definitely do in this case), you have to recognize that this is very good writing. Many people believe that reading things on-line is necessarily detrimental to the verbal skills of teenagers and young adults. This doesn't have to be true because there is a lot of really good writing on the Internet. You just have to find it.
