Just days after Missouri voters approved tough new restrictions on puppy mills, Missouri lawmakers are talking about amending or overturning them.

In most states, such contempt for voters would be shocking and surprising. In Missouri, it’s old hat.

Last May, seven months before voters had their say, rural legislators tried to preempt the vote by prohibiting citizen initiatives involving any aspect of agriculture. It was blatantly unconstitutional. But no fewer than five bills containing similar language were introduced.

Now that Proposition B, the so-called Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, has been approved, lawmakers are gearing up to override it.

“Voters who voted on Proposition B did not understand what it does,” said state Rep. Tom Loehner, R-Koeltztown, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.

Mr. Loehner, a hog farmer, sponsored one of those five bills to prohibit citizen initiatives on agriculture.

He uses the fact that it failed in 100 of the state’s 114 counties as justification.

“There’s a lot of people (in urban areas) who just do not understand agriculture,” he said.

We could make the reverse argument about other complex issues, but that misses the point.

Missouri’s urban areas are home to most of its population and most of its voters. The state constitution allows voters to “propose and enact or reject” laws.

That’s what happened with Proposition B. Nearly 61,000 more Missourians voted in favor of the initiative than voted against it.

This week, Mr. Loehner lamented the failure of his measure to prevent citizen initiatives. But he said he favors only amending the new law to “grandfather” existing licensed dog breeders “who have abided by every federal and state law.”

Others go much further. The Kansas City Star last week quoted newly elected state Sen. Mike Parson, a Bolivar Republican, as saying he would begin working on changing or repealing the measure “probably immediately.”

Many Proposition B opponents characterized the initiative as a jobs issue.

Mr. Loehner estimated that the new law, which goes into effect next November, could cost “probably 800 or 1,000” jobs as what he calls reputable breeders are forced to close or scale down their operations.

Echoing a theme that’s become a legislative perennial, he warned that the puppy mill law was “just the first step” toward future initiatives that would take aim at agricultural practices in factory farms.

Outstate voters long have harbored an irrational fear of such an assault. In 2003, 2004 and 2005, former state Rep. Jim Guest, R-Kingdom City, went so far as to propose “anti-terrorist” legislation that would have made it a crime to stand on public land and take pictures of barns, fields and public land where animals graze.

But the sport of legislative second-guessing is hardly confined to agricultural issues.

Two years ago, lawmakers sought to overturn a decades-old consumer protection that prohibits utility companies from charging for new power plants until they have begun operating.

A few years before that, lawmakers approved a concealed carry law after voters — led by urban residents — voted it down.

In both cases, though, they had the decency to wait at least a year after the initiative before trying to overturn it.

Missouri lawmakers should respect the will of the voters on puppy mills, even if they disagree with what voters had to say. Anything less damages democracy and insults voters.