Today I saw a weak, but well voted, answer.

There were a number of viable, potential answers to the question. So this was not a "how do I drive drunk safely" impossible answer that must be answered "you don't".

The answerer thought it was, though. The notable blindness to obvious viable answers was a real problem.

The answerer did indeed proscribe an answer. But it was a really terrible answer, which I can safely say because OA spent several paragraphs saying exactly that: tearing the answer apart and saying what a bad idea it was, and how it could get the person labeled a creep and banned, which are pretty extreme outcomes and not really true. Now if the answer is so bad, why is the answerer giving it as their answer? The answer felt like a strawman which was created only to be cut down. In short, the answer was not bona-fide.

It would be OK to -- as an aside from a positive and genuine answer -- to say "lots of people think of doing this other thing, don't do that for reasons".

I can't ascribe motive. But I can say the view from 30,000 feet resembled: a political axe, as in "how do you safely secure a long gun too long for the gun safe" -> "You don't, you could put a triggerlock on it but your kid will drill it out and shoot up a school, the only answer is no guns". The rhetoric aligned pretty well with the more extreme side of a popular faction and repeated the usual dogwhistles. (nothing against this faction AT ALL!) This may have polarized the subsequent discussion a bit; one problem with discussing anything with political undertones is any criticism is dismissed as political.

At the end of the day, it's a terrible answer, and misled OP.

But how do you have that discussion?

The ways I tried didn't work: First simply saying "This is not an answer to the question." And then explaining how I felt "you don't" isn't an answer, frameshifts shouldn't be extreme or made lightly, an answer you tear apart isn't an answer, etc. This melted down into extreme violations of "be nice", "assume good intent", mass deletion and an admonishment of "This Ends Here" without any link to a rule to support it.

Last I heard, comments were precisely for commenting on problems with answers. That is literally their one purpose, and it seemed that I was the only one following that rule.

So going forward... how are you supposed to handle fundamental flaws in answers like this? Is there a reasonable and standard process which should apply to all Contributors equally? I am assuming that is a core value here. Am I mistaken?