(Newser) – It turns out that people who subscribe to Guns & Ammo magazine are not big fans of gun control. Yesterday, editor Jim Bequette announced that the magazine was dumping longtime editor and columnist Dick Metcalf, and that Bequette himself was stepping down sooner than he'd planned, thanks to a column Metcalf penned advocating modest gun control measures. (PDF here.) "The fact is, all constitutional rights are regulated," he argued, likening gun ownership to car ownership. The column went viral before the issue even hit the web, the Daily Beast reports, with conservatives savaging it, both in blog posts and on Facebook.

"Readers are hopping mad," Bequette wrote in his mea culpa. "I made a mistake by publishing the column. I thought it would generate a healthy exchange of ideas on gun rights. I miscalculated, pure and simple." Bequette had already planned to leave in December, but said he would "advance that schedule immediately," and that Metcalf's " association with Guns & Ammo has officially ended." The Washington Times notes that Metcalf is the third gun writer since 2007 to lose his job for suggesting openness to some controls. (Read more Guns and Ammo magazine stories.)

