The right to be Wyatt Earp

It's one of those clichés about Americans that won't go away: the idea that many of us have guns. Hollywood has done more to further this notion than any political lobby, any organization of outdoorsmen or any rap gangsters, so I won't blame you for thinking it's true.

I also won't blame you because it is true — in the sense that 80 million Americans do own guns and are usually proud to do so. Typically the guns are hunting rifles that are kept in a closet somewhere. Not many people carry a pistol wherever they go — although this may be changing.

A front-page story in Monday's New York Times described how it's become legal in a growing number of states — 22 so far — to carry a loaded gun (often a concealed one) into a bar or restaurant. Twenty more states, including New York, do not forbid it, meaning it might be legal. Only eight states, including California, specifically outlaw it.

Interest in guns has spiked, with sales up 25 percent in 2009 over the previous year. Among the many conspiracy theories about Barack Obama is the idea that he and the Democrats want to restrict gun ownership. A general sense of desperation about the economy, reduced public services and fear of a lower class that all too often does resort to gun violence are also making people fear for their safety.

"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 [have] been shot or injured or assaulted or raped,"

Curry Todd told The New York Times. Todd is the Republican state representative who introduced the law in Tennessee allowing guns in bars.

Bar patron Art Andersen, 44, disagreed, telling the newspaper:

"It opens the door to trouble. It's giving you the right to be
Wyatt Earp."

While some point to the 2007 university massacre in Virginia and last week's gunman at the University of Texas as examples of why society would be better without guns, others feel that if students and staff had been armed as well, the killers would have been stopped earlier.

Americans' right to carry handguns at all is the result of a popular interpretation of the Founding Fathers' intent. The second amendment to the constitution — coming right after freedom of speech, worship, and assembly — reads:

"A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

And this is where grammar and punctuation matter. Those in favor of private gun ownership, such as the National Rifle Association, usually quote only the second half of the sentence and interpret "the people" to mean "individuals". Those who would limit gun ownership take "the people" to mean "society", and "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" to be a clause — set off by commas — that explains the well-regulated militia.

America won its revolution because each state supplied weapons to a temporary militia that it had trained. Hunters and sportsmen were never questioned; the economy of the time depended on them catching deer and beavers. What's more, the Founding Fathers used single-shot muskets that took time to reload. They didn't foresee arguments in bars being settled by handguns. They didn't foresee Wyatt Earp.

"If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" — a slogan from the 1970s — is a popular argument today in frontier towns like Nashville. Yet even in the saloons there, the new law won't let you drink alcohol if you're carrying a gun. That's to prevent patrons from being "loaded" in more than one sense of the word.