Public officials should be banned from trading individual stocks because they have a hand in the motion and value of those same stocks. Much like insider trading unbalances the fairness of the free market, officials trading stocks allows those same officials to grow their wealth at the expense of those who don't have the same privileges.

You misstate the case. The reason these officials are no longer allowed to trade stocks is that it ruins the fairness of the free market they are in office to protect, at the expense of the people who put them there. Even with these ethics rules, numerous occurrences of political and official corruption have been recorded and reported. Further, there are alternatives to stock trading, and the loss of this single source of income ought not hurt a truly ethical official, as the average salary of an official is roughly $100,000 per year. Finally, their rights aren't being "stripped away" if they ran for the office they received: they knew what they were signing up for.

If lawmakers operated on a basis of "most," many laws would be obsolete. They must pass laws for "all." Perhaps there is a fairer way than a blanket ban, but it has yet to be introduced or passed. Because of this lack, authorities must protect the rights of the average citizen rather than those of public servants.