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Applications for gun permits jumped in some Pennsylvania counties last week, a spike attributed to people’s reactions to the rampage that struck and momentarily froze Paris.

Easy now. Let’s not lose perspective.

ISIS, while capable of abhorrent attacks, won’t conquer Europe or mount a sea invasion of our nation’s East Coast.

Too often when a crisis, particularly an unfamiliar one, snags the public’s attention, certain people allow prudence to get trampled by panic. They rush to scream “the sky is falling,” rush to judgment, even rush to war.

It happened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It happened when pedophile claims first surfaced against ex-Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

On a far lesser scale, it could be witnessed last week as Luzerne County government workers and some county residents wrestled with the what-ifs of a government shutdown.

The world, and our tiny slice of it in Northeastern Pennsylvania, is filled with perils; uncertainty abounds. That’s not new.

But neither is the propensity for some people to use a crisis to their advantage, furthering their personal or political agendas by capitalizing on fear, not facts. Allowing fear to dictate your decisions usually leads to making bad ones. And costly ones.

Do you recall, during World War II, how the United States rounded up Japanese Americans living on the Pacific Coast and sent them to internment camps? How much needless suffering did that racism-fueled response cause? How much human potential was wasted during those years of containment?

How much have we learned since?

Sensible people might decide they have good reason to own and carry a handgun. And they should. Who knows, one day they might pull the weapon to save their own life, or the lives of others. Even thwart a wider catastrophe. However, the likelihood of that scenario should be carefully weighed against the other possible dangers: an accidental shooting, losing the weapon to a thief or, as reported last week near Wilkes-Barre, forgetfully leaving the piece on the toilet paper dispenser at Walmart.

Let’s keep life’s risks in their proper context. Heart attacks happen more frequently than terror attacks. Car crashes outnumber plane crashes. Suicides outnumber homicides.

We shouldn’t downplay and ignore today’s very real dangers, but we would be wise to not allow them to domineer us.

Whether worried about a cash crisis at home or a scary situation on the global stage, here’s one philosophy worth reviving: This too shall pass. Interestingly, the phrase most likely came to us from the people of ancient Persia.