Given that social media commentary becomes part of the public domain once it’s posted, I want to share a thought from a friend of mine who put this out there.

“Is it just me, or did I miss the President saying he wanted to confiscate all guns? No one wants your f****** guns!!!! What I want is a conversation of whether or why gun violence is an epidemic in this country and what we can do about it. For beginners, you folks on the other side need to convince me why adding more guns is the answer. And I’m skeptical about defending yourself from the government, because right now quite frankly some gun owners scare me a helluva lot more than the government. Thanks for listening.”

My friend is a lawyer. He’s a smart fellow — and not just because I happen to agree with him.

Gun-rights advocates keep saying things that aren’t true, starting with their false claims that President Obama wants to take our guns away from us. After that, the lies spin off into fairy tales about martial law, seeking to suspend the Constitution and a conspiracy to get Barack Obama elected to a third consecutive term.

Another friend of mine actually told me — to my face — that he believes the third-term conspiracy actually has merit. I laughed out loud.

My friend’s request is a reasonable one, which is to have a rational conversation about whether there’s a way to stem the flow of guns in our society without doing harm to the Second Amendment, the one that guarantees Americans the right to “keep and bear arms.”

Can’t we have that conversation without the crazy talk that comes mostly from one side proclaiming that it’s all a plot to take away our guns?