Do not argue about any (possibly absurd) regulations with locals.
Only recently we were in Laramie, Wyoming, and entered a steak house to have dinner.
As full-blooded Europeans, we like to have cocktails (and what have you) before dinner, so we sat down at the bar and ordered two Margaritas and an orange juice. The waiter refused to take the order because our then nine-year-old daughter was sitting on a bar stool right next to us.
We didn’t understand.
The waiter explained that a minor “wasn’t allowed to sit at the bar, because they served alcohol.”
I then made the mistake to mention that the orange juice was actually for my daughter, so there was no problem whatsoever. The waiter’s attitude became more tense, and he made it very clear that we shouldn’t try European logic in this kind of place.
We then noticed an older couple of locals at the bar staring at us in obvious disdain, as if we were bad parents. What bothered us even more was that the man was carrying a gun — just like that.
It definitely scared us more than a Margarita.
So we sat down in a booth — four feet away from the bar — and everything was perfect again. The gun man stopped staring at us, and everyone else proceeded with refusing to think about what was so wrong with this very picture.
Because time and again one and the same thing appears to be clear in the US —
The pen is NOT mightier than the sword.
SOURCES: photograph retrieved though Jammy Monkey Photography.