You're invited to a talk about guns

Anybody here interested in the Second Amendment?

Didn't think so.

No, everybody here is interested in the Second Amendment. So if 142,000 Kootenai County residents try to cram into the Coeur d'Alene Public Library's community room Friday evening to listen to Dr. David Adler, we might have a problem.

Adler, constitutional scholar extraordinaire, is coming back to Coeur d'Alene for the fourth consecutive spring. Thanks to the Idaho Humanities Council and the Friends of the Library, Adler will be speaking on the topic, "The Second Amendment: Fundamentals and Myths." The lecture starts at 7 and, after his remarks, Adler will entertain questions from the audience.

Speaking of titles, Adler has held some hefty ones at all three of the state's universities. When he wasn't teaching or writing, he was delivering more than 500 lectures throughout the state. And that's only scratching the surface.

Adler is regarded as one of the nation's top constitutional and presidential experts. He's published more than 100 scholarly articles, essays and book chapters, and is a frequent contributor to national and international TV, radio, newspapers and magazines.

Now in his role as president of The Sun Valley Institute, a nonprofit organization created to promote civic education and civil dialogue, lectures like the one Adler will deliver Friday night are right up the institute's alley. "Civic" and "civil" are perfect descriptors.

Even though he tackles controversial subjects that trigger sensitive personal and political feelings, Dr. Adler has a gift for imparting verifiable information in a way that seems to alienate no reasonable person. He debunks myths without debunking those who held fast to those fabrications. He has partisans from the left and the right shaking hands at lecture's end.

Oh - and he never uses notes.

If you'd like to attend the lecture, please plan to show up early. If you can't join in, you don't need to miss the show entirely: CDA-TV (Channel 19) will record and rebroadcast the event, and soon afterward, the library will have copies of the DVD available for the public in the Library Collection.

Admission is free, but visitors will be asked to check their preconceived notions at the door.

Previous lectures by Dr. David Adler at the Coeur d'Alene library:

• "Holding Government Accountable," 2012

• "The State of the Presidency: Constitutional and Political Challenges," 2013

• "The Constitution and Religion: Origins, Challenges and Accommodations," 2014