State senators offered many reasons for defeating a bill requiring gun locks in households with small children — maintaining tradition, resisting government intrusion, obeying the law of natural selection, to name but a few. Sen. Leo Keiffer of Caribou summed it up best: With their guns under lock and key, Mainers might as well put signs in their front yards telling criminals to “come in and help yourselves.” It would have been a crime-spree twofer — rampaging robbers and wholesale violations of Maine’s billboard law.

Rural Maine has a lot of old, crummy roads — narrow, twisting, no shoulders, no passing lanes. To you, they’re old, crummy roads. To the state Department of Transportation, according to a new policy, they’re “Scenic Byways” that must be preserved lest the countryside lose its leisurely ambiance. Remember that next time you’re stuck behind a crawling dump truck for 20 miles. Those Playmate mud flaps can be quite scenic.

Confused as to why the Legislature would let kids play with guns yet prohibit them from riding bikes without helmets? There’s an easy explanation. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. It says nothing about the right to bare heads.

House Speaker Steven Rowe scolded his colleagues the other day for speeding. He said he’s received many complaints from citizens about cars roaring by, the telltale blue license plates a blur. He advised leadfooted lawmakers to get up 15 minutes earlier for that morning commute to Augusta. He could have suggested they get off the Turnpike and take scenic byways to work. They slow everyone else down.

A new poll by Strategic Marketing Services finds that 73 percent of Mainers support a $75 million bond for public land purchases to maintain the state’s long heritage of access to the outdoors. If SMS is as accurate here as it was in projecting voter approval of the Forest Compact and gay rights legislation, this would be a good time to put that camper up for sale.