HOW WE SEE IT: Gun Debate Becomes Hysterical

For better or worse, we now know the lay of the land regarding what has already become one of the most contentious issues of 2013: gun control.

Well, supporters call it reduction of gun violence, because who can oppose that. But in either case, the president last week laid out his response to the Newtown, Conn., school shooting.

Many of the proposals wouldn’t have aff ected Adam Lanza’s capacity to inflict injury and death on helpless elementary students; some are the standard measures some gun enthusiasts feared President Barack Obama would attempt in his fi rst term.

The thing we fear, however, is the complete hysteria surrounding this important issue.

After Obama issued his outline for legislative and executive order changes to make some guns harder to acquire, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant and the state’s speaker of the House, Phil Gunn, held a press conference to call on the Mississippi Legislature to make it illegal to enforce any of the new federal measures.

“I am asking that you immediately pass legislation that would make any unconstitutional order by the president illegal to enforce in Mississippi by state or local law enforcement,” Bryant wrote in a letter to legislative leaders.

Lawmakers in other states pressed for new laws designed to stop an” overreaching” federal government.

In case someone thought otherwise, the gun control debate is prime for demagoguery. Can anything help guard against that?

Brent Meyers, freshman Benton County justice of the peace, of Lowell joined the fray Tuesday, asking his fellow members of the Quorum Court to support efforts at the state level to exempt Arkansas from any new federal regulations.

Such ideas are premature, to say the least, and ludicrous in any case. Benton County has a million other important matters the Quorum Court needs to address before it bothers with useless resolutions that seek a form of secession from the Union.

Frankly, this gun debate is likely to become a battle between the extremes, the ones who hate the Second Amendment and those who believe it preserves a right to buy handguns, automatic rifles, cannons and tanks.

Somewhere in the middle, perhaps, a few motivated people can make a diff erence. The goal is this: Limit the amount of damage a nutjob can do when he decides to harm others.

The NRA will stay true to its benefactors, the gun manufacturers, and the gun-haters will press forward with as much as they think they can get to eradicate guns. What we need are reasonable, middle-ground types who can apply some common sense.

Is strengthening background checks and making them universal really a violation of the Constitution?

Must we really insist the only limit on magazine capacities is the capability of engineers to make them work?

Everyone needs to settle way down. The proposed legislation isn’t going to passed anytime soon, if at all. There’s time for reasonable debate. And last we checked, Congress has many other things to do.

Anyone who believes the Newtown shooting was the event that suddenly cleared a path for a serious crackdown on guns is dreaming. It created a political explosion — one that pays little attention to the great loss experienced by real people. But it did not suddenly make the issue of guns in the United States easy.

Let’s keep the prayers going for the families in Newtown, and not let the hysteria turn their loss into a three-ring circus.