In the United States, private ownership of handguns ought to be banned.

What if I told you that the Gods are dead? Would you have tears well up in your eyes? Would they be of happiness or sadness, for now you are released from their grip on your life?Now, what if I told you that you and I - Danielle and Lexus, lowliers from an obscure debate website - have killed them? You wouldn't believe me, you'd have to be able to remember what we have done together to kill them, but it was all "a dream".And what if I told you that the Gods came back, just as strong -- maybe even stronger -- than before. Surely, you'd lose your mind.***You, Danielle, say to me, echoing the Flobots: "It must have been a dream but it felt so real Saw the wounds, heard the screams, thought about your last meal How we ate like kings, how you led us all in grace How nobody had forseen what would soon take place And when everything went down The silence you left was the strangest sound Dangerous town but we all felt safe Cause we knew that you slept with the angels now Rumors keep coming in A few thousand missing you just like me People keep running into you I've got a feeling that you might be alive" "Danielle," I say, "it wasn't a dream - out took we our guns and shot them. Borges described what had happened long before it happened; he was the Nostrodomus of his day." I chuckle. Borges. He reminds me of Bataille. Maybe it was his eyes and their stories. "He describes it perfectly -- he says the following quote: ... they were cunning, ignorant and cruel like old beasts of prey and that, if we let ourselves be overcome by fear or piety, they would finally destroy us. We took out our heavy revolvers (all of a sudden there were revolvers ... ) and joyfully killed the Gods. Do you not remember, Danielle? What we had done to kill the Gods? What we had to do to kill the Gods, even as we were told of what it all meant?""What does it all mean?" you say. Many ask the same and find an answer in the Gods, where do we look now? We look to ourselves.***"Did we really kill the Gods, if we still know?" you ask."What does that mean?"Silence.***Some years later."Danielle --" I motion you to come over. It's a picture of the day we killed the Gods, and the day we gave up our harnesses. We moved from a Sun of light to one of malediction. "I don't want you to forget the day we killed the Gods. We gave up all investment in a higher order that day.""Did we?" you say. Always asking questions and never seeming to find the answers. Maybe the answers were the higher power that we should have given up our investment in, not the Gods that represented the answers. Maybe you did remember taking out the revolver, but you don't want to invest in a higher truth. "Ever since that day, you've been asking questions that never make sense ... why?" I need to know. I have to know, it's been bothering me for years.You look to me. I look to you. Silence, we all know there is little affirmation in it. Or do we know? I don't.You begin softly: "We begin with the end I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?" ***The DebateWe have moved on from normal Gods to ones that are secular. Ones that have names and round numbers, specific speech times and lack of unknowing qualities. But the old Gods were never unknown, we knew them full well; and we know our own Gods full well, with prepackaged tubs filled with evidence that brings us no closer to anything.The current Gods, are they worse than the past ones? Maybe, maybe not. Do they shoot down lightning? They do not. But did the old ones demand servility, waking at 4 AM to talk for days about things that you won't remember, just remember the numbers? They did not. I don't want to know, I can't know anything. "It’s really the object of the laughter, or the object of the tears, that suppresses thought, that takes all knowledge away from us" says one smart guy, but he's too smart for his own good, does he worship his own God? Maybe. Probably. Okay, he has to - otherwise he wouldn't make books.We ban handguns, not for the sake of the handguns, but for the sake of ourselves. We move from God to God, service to service, and each step takes us further away from living life as it was. We still worship a God, except now we don't speak. Danielle, do you remember when we would walk down the beach together and talk about waking up the next day, looking to our future? I remember. But now we can't do that, because the next day is debate after debate, knowledge creation after knowledge creation, and an ultimate denial of common humanity.If we kill this God, then we move to another, and I can't have anything else taken from me. First it was security in the world; which I regained at the loss of dreams. Or did I? Or did we, Danielle? Did we become more safe, now that we worship an institution more than we worship our own bodies?What I mean by all of this is, we have moved from a monolithic idea of the Gods and have moved to another, just as bad, maybe worse, maybe better, but we can't hedge our bets. Remove our access to guns and make sure we can't kill this God, because the next one may remove our own living. And I want to live with you, Danielle. I wanted to dream with you, but what is dreaming without living? I don't know, and I'd rather not know.