We write interesting laws in New Mexico. Let’s call them pretzel laws, laws bent into odd shapes.

Beginning July 1, you can carry a concealed weapon into a restaurant that serves beer and wine, but you still can’t bring your favorite Glock with you to a joint that has a full liquor license.

Everybody got that?

In a restaurant with beer and wine, you can bring your gun but you can’t drink. In a saloon or restaurant with a wide selection of your favorite orange vodkas, you aren’t allowed to carry your gun.

(Question for gun enthusiasts in restaurants: Does it make a difference if you’re having the fish or the beef? Is a gun like wine? Would it be declasse to have a Ruger in your pants while ordering the chicken pot pie? Is this an Emily Post question or does Guns & Ammo cover it?)

As usual in these situations, someone insists on being adult about the whole thing. Let’s get that out of the way right now.

Carol Wight, chief executive officer of the New Mexico Restaurant Association, offers down home common sense in the March 11 Albuquerque Journal ($sub. req.): “We still don’t believe it’s a good policy to have guns and liquor in the same vicinity.”

Poor Carol Wight, attempting to be a grown-up when we’re talking about booze and guns. Bless her.

Of course she’s right. Guns mixed with booze is a bad idea and I don’t care of you’re for or against concealed carry. (I’m agnostic on it myself. I don’t know of any epidemic of shootings in states that allow concealed carry, which suggests that the great majority of gun owners are responsible people. So if your combination plate just has to come with a firearm, well …  try not to gum up the trigger guard with your sopaipilla honey, OK?)

Now, back to the rabbit hole.

If someone has a Glock on his belt when he goes into a restaurant, how is the server going to know? If our concealed Glockster orders a beer, will he be frisked? Patted down? Will metal detectors come with the appetizers?

Then there’s the matter of beer and wine vs a full liquor license.

Does anyone really believe you can’t get as loaded on six beers as you can on bourbon?

Last week, James Ruiz hit a car in Santa Fe and killed two lovely teenage sisters. In the Journal story ($sub. req), there is this: “Ruiz allegedly told police that he had been drinking beers for several hours prior to the accident. His sample showed a 0.22 percent blood alcohol concentration, well above the state’s presumed level of intoxication for a driver, which is 0.08 percent, Department of Health spokeswoman Deborah Busemeyer said Tuesday.”

Drinking beers. Oh, he was in a restaurant, too.

New Mexico creates odd laws.

Remember that in New Mexico we sell liquor at the same places we sell gas. I have long wondered how serious we can be about preventing DWI when we allow alcohol to be sold in the same place we sell gasoline.

Somebody needs to explain this to me. Maybe we could get together over burgers and a Beretta.