To address this, I'm going to use a metaphor, so please stick with it. Imagine that there is a surge of deaths from illegal street racing. Actually, let's stick with deaths we currently have and just imagine that the media focused on them more and created public outrage. Here's some examples from the last couple of months.
May 2013 - Street racing responsible for local mother's death
June 2013 - Street racer kills two teens in Woodstock
July 2013 - Street racing death of Antoich teen
Imagine - Every month, there is a new horror story of senseless death from street racing. It's on all the papers, websites, and tv. Media would draw parallels to
The Fast and the Furious. Outraged, people start asking seemingly sensible questions.
Moderates - "Why do we have cars with 300+ horsepower that can go in excess of 140mph? Why do you NEED a car like that? I don't think you should have that car taken away, but all cars should have electronic speed limiters set at 75mph. Why would you legally need to ever drive faster than that?"
Car enthusiasts would say that they go to the track and practice their hobbies responsibly and that the number of people who street race illegally, although they seem numerous because because of the media attention, are truly the minority. Some people don't track but just want to be able to own the cars they want without being modified or changed. Plus, people intent on breaking the law would simply remove the limiters anyway, thus only penalizing law abiding citizens.
The media might paint these people who go to the track as car nuts who are wannabe race car drivers and "if you want to do that, just become a race car driver and leave driving at the track to professionals".
Conservatives - "These dangerous high horsepower
race cars shouldn't be allowed on the road. Why do you need so much power to just get from point A to point B? Plus, some of these cars (
like my BMW Z4M) can get as low as 17MPG. Any car on the road should be required to get at LEAST 25MPG city AND have less than 300hp."
Then there would also be those with just enough knowledge of cars to be dangerous: "Street racers love the use of rear wheel drive cars, which allows them to "drift" and are inherently hard to control. If someone wants a "fast car", they could just drive something like a Mini Cooper. It's front wheel drive and 200 hp is MORE than enough to do anything legal. No RWD cars."
Extremists - "Why do we even have cars? Other countries don't have nearly as many cars as we do. Places like Hong Kong have very little private car ownership and most people use public transportation, ride bikes or walk. There is actually a long wait and a lottery to have the privilege of owning a car there and I don't see why we couldn't be like them. Outlaw cars or at least and make them VERY hard and expensive to obtain. There is no reason anyone NEEDS a car, let alone these dangerous RACE CARS."
Bottom line
Think of any activity you love or any thing you like or want to own and imagine if I said "Tell me why you NEED to have that. Justify it or it's illegal". We should always need to justify why we CAN'T have freedoms not why we CAN.
We don't need a lot of things. The nice thing about living in a free country is the right to do what you want. Life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. When we give up our freedoms because irresponsible people are irresponsible, that's very sad.