The current controversy over the state’s conceal and carry gun law shows just how bizarre simple laws can become. It also highlights the need for lawmakers to avoid creating solutions to problems that don’t exist.

A Hennepin County District Court judge last Friday granted an injunction to two Twin Cities churches who sued arguing the state had no right to tell them how to communicate with their members. At issue was the state requirement to post a sign banning guns and proscribe the wording of that sign.

The churches argued that infringes on their right granted in the Constitution for free exercise of religion. The injunction lets the church post its own sign, with its own words and allows the church to completely ban guns from their property, including spaces used for Sunday school or homeless shelters.

The whole controversy reminds us of an old Talking Heads album, &uot;Stop Making Sense.&uot; Somebody stopped making sense a long time ago on this one.

It was appropriate for lawmakers to make the granting of rights to carry a concealed weapon more consistent and uniform across the state. In the past, state law allowed local sheriffs and police chiefs to determine who should be able to carry a concealed weapon. While there was some merit to allowing the local law enforcement that judgment, there were different rules depending on where you lived.

But the conceal and carry law as passed, even the second time, went far beyond solving that somewhat insignificant problem. The law has evolved into a golden lamb of the legal system, and will likely draw thousands of dollars of legal fees while we as a society argue about what we have to say to people bringing guns into our churches.

Lost in the argument of the right to bear arms are the rights of individuals to have quiet enjoyment of their private property. Anyone who wants to ban guns from property they own should be able to do so without a sign proscribed by the state.

Businesses should have the same right.

What’s missed in the whole right to bear arms argument is that we could have passed a law providing consistent application of granting conceal and carry permits without the loaded down bureaucracy that is hanging all over this law.

Now, it is likely the law will be ruled unconstitutional again.

The Legislature created more problems with their conceal and carry solution.

&045; The Free Press (Mankato)