It was a rare peek behind the Oz-like curtain of gun journalism in its role as the gun industry’s mouthpiece: A respected columnist was dismissed from Guns & Ammo magazine in October after he dared to write the obvious — that all constitutional rights, including the right to bear arms, are and “need to be” subject to legitimate regulation. This was heresy for Second Amendment absolutists.

Furious readers threatened a boycott, and the magazine quickly apologized, saying the column titled “Let’s Talk Limits” by Dick Metcalf never should have been published. Mr. Metcalf, a self-described gun rights “fundamentalist,” soon found himself “vanished, disappeared” as a writer for that audience, he said in a recent interview with Ravi Somaiya of The Times. His column was gone along with his starring role on a TV gun show. Mr. Metcalf said his editor called saying two major gun manufacturers threatened to end business with the publisher if he was not dismissed.

Jim Bequette, the editor who apologized after publishing the column (and went immediately into retirement), told readers he mistakenly thought “it would generate a healthy exchange of ideas on gun rights.” Imagine that, a healthy exchange of ideas in the gun debate. This is exactly what is needed by a nation suffering tens of thousands of gun deaths each year.

Polls have shown that even a majority of members of the National Rifle Association support safer regulation. But the association sticks to false and alarmist warnings that the Constitution bars compromise. No less a conservative than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has written that “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” Don’t tell that to Guns & Ammo.