Don't Bring Your Guns to Town

I don't know about you, but I feel like we haven't had any stupid ideas in a while. America, hit me with your best shot.

NASHVILLE —Happy-hour beers were going for $5 at Past Perfect, a cavernous bar just off this city’s strip of honky-tonks and tourist shops when Adam Ringenberg walked in with a loaded 9-millimeter pistol in the front pocket of his gray slacks.

Honky-tonks? Guns? Gray slacks? I like where this is going, America. Bring it.

Also, beers are $5 now in Nashville? Yeesh. Nobody tell New York, or we'll have a new home for the $10 Bud Light.

Mr. Ringenberg, a technology consultant, is one of the state’s nearly 300,000 handgun permit holders who have recently seen their rights greatly expanded by a new law — one of the nation’s first — that allows them to carry loaded firearms into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol.

I knew you could do it, America! Of all the stupid ideas, "We should allow guns in bars" has to be in the Top 5, right between "Sure, we'll take the group discount for the champagne room" and "Let's poke that bear with this stick."

“If someone’s sticking a gun in my face, I’m not relying on their charity to keep me alive,” said Mr. Ringenberg, 30, who said he carries the gun for personal protection when he is not at work.

OH SNAP. How long do you think Mr. Ringebenberg, technology consultant by day, gunslinger by night, has been waiting to unleash that line? It sounds like he's auditioning to write the next Vin Diesel movie. I'll bet you $100 that the Lone Ranger there immediately turned to the only woman in that bar and flashed her a grin.

Gun rights advocates like Mr. Ringenberg may applaud the new law, but many customers, waiters and restaurateurs here are dismayed by the decision.

“That’s not cool in my book,” Art Andersen, 44, said as he nursed a Coors Light at Sam’s Sports Bar and Grill near Vanderbilt University. “It opens the door to trouble. It’s giving you the right to be Wyatt Earp.”

The right to be Wyatt Earp, as most constitutional law scholars know, is derived from an amalgam of the First, Second, Ninth, and Twenty-First Amendments, and is located somewhere between the penumbra of the right to bear arms and the emanations of the right to get drunk.

Tennessee is one of four states, along with Arizona, Georgia and Virginia, that recently enacted laws explicitly allowing loaded guns in bars. (Eighteen other states allow weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol.) The new measures in Tennessee and the three other states come after two landmark Supreme Court rulings that citizens have an individual right — not just in connection with a well-regulated militia — to keep a loaded handgun for home defense.

Before they opened season on brown people, I would have said that one of these states was not like the others. What happened, Arizona? How did we go from Luis Gonzalez beating Rivera and ASU co'eds to Derek Anderson and whatever the heck has happened to John McCain?

Experts say these laws represent the latest wave in the country’s gun debate, as the gun lobby seeks, state by state, to expand the realm of guns in everyday life.

Experts also characterized the immigration laws as the latest wave in the country's immigration debate, as the obviousness lobby seeks, statement by statement, to expand the role of Duh in everyday life.

The rulings, which overturned handgun bans in Washington and Chicago, have strengthened the stance of gun rights advocates nationwide. More than 250 lawsuits now challenge various gun laws, and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a Republican, called for guns to be made legal on campuses after a shooting last week at the University of Texas, Austin, arguing that armed bystanders might have stopped the gunman.

Armed bystanders might have also shot each other in the ensuing panic. Do we actually need to argue about this? It's like saying that we could have stopped that kid from throwing a ball inside the classroom by giving balls to every other kid there.

The new laws have also brought to light the status of 20 other states — New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts among them — that do not address the question, appearing by default to allow those with permits to carry guns into establishments that serve alcohol, according to the Legal Community Against Violence, a nonprofit group that promotes gun control and tracks state gun laws.

Default is just a fancy word for "unintended consequences." Are we really going to let guns be regulated under the same principle that sent Homer Simpson to space?

“A lot of states for a long time have not felt the need to say you could or couldn’t do it,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “There weren’t as many conceal-carry permits out there, so it wasn’t really an issue.” Now, he said, “the attitude from the gun lobby is that they should be able to take their guns wherever they want. In the last year, they’re starting to move toward needing no permit at all.”

Look. I don't mind guns for the most part. I think that, on occasion, they are a terrific idea, just because you never know. For example:

Imagine, if you will, that a zombie apocalypse breaks out. Now, you could either be that zombie's brunch, or you can retrieve your snub-nosed .45 from your conveniently stashed hiding place, tear through this country on a motorcycle, and hook up with Emma Stone at an amusement park in California where the electricity, somehow, is still on.

Within two minutes of the zombie apocalypse, that gun will be your best friend.

You just never know.

State Representative Curry Todd, a Republican who first introduced the guns-in-bars bill here, said that carrying a gun inside a tavern was never the law’s primary intention. Rather, he said, the law lets people defend themselves while walking to and from restaurants.

If the primary intention is to let people defend themselves as they walk to the restaurant, then why don't we just make them check their guns at the saloon door? That way, nobody brings a gun into a place where the primary intentions of the patrons are to get drunk, get the girl, and get into a fight. And gunfights are kept out on the streets, where they belong.

“Folks were being robbed, assaulted — it was becoming an issue of personal safety,” said Mr. Todd, who added that the National Rifle Association had aided his legislative efforts. “The police aren’t going to be able to protect you. They’re going to be checking out the crime scene after you and your family’s been shot or injured or assaulted or raped.”

Of course the NRA is giving money to this asshole, who really ought to be the keynote speaker at the Rally to Keep Fear Alive. I have a pretty vivid imagination, but I have a really difficult time picturing the circumstances under which your family was about to get raped at the local sports bar.

Also, way to undermine the police and turn them from crimestoppers to crime scene investigators. I bet you, Mr. Todd, that if you asked any policeman, they would tell you that guns make injuring, assaulting, raping, and, especially, shooting people a lot easier.

Under Tennessee’s new law, gun permit holders are not supposed to drink alcohol while carrying their weapons. Mr. Ringenberg washed down his steak sandwich with a Coke.

The good news? You can bring your gun to the bar! The bad news? You can't drink at the bar.

Have you ever been to a bar when you can't have a drink? Why would you even do that? I know. I know! But, imagine you're on antibiotics or whatever and can't have a drink and still go out to a bar. It's super boring and awkward. You never know what to do with your hands when that happens. So you'll get bored and fidgety and, when you finally reach that point where it's obvious to everyone that you are just pretending to text someone, you'll bring out your gun, because, again, there's nothing to do with your hands. And then Romeo behind you, who is trying to grind up on some girl who's really not into it, will get pushed back when his hand strays just a bit too far to the south. And he'll stumble backwards and his elbow will bump your elbow and . . . Yo, Nick, there's something on your shirt . . . Yo, Nick . . . Yo, Nick, you ok? . . . OHMYGOD SOMEONE JUST SHOT NICK. There is a shooter in this bar. Thank God all the people in this bar have guns.

EVERYONE START SHOOTING UNTIL WHOEVER WAS SHOOTING STOPS.