Is that dynamite, or are you checking out a book?

Shoot. I mean, heck. What's Nevada coming to when a feller can't bring a sidearm into a library?

There they go again, trying to bring their sissified California values to our Battle Born Silver State. We didn't get to be Battle Born by leaving our guns in the closet. Why, it wasn't long ago you could strap a pistol to your leg and spit tobacco anywhere you pleased.

Now we're lucky if we can smoke a good cigarette without someone getting all choked up about it.

So I'm heading to the library last week with my youngins in tow when I look up and see a big sign reading, "No weapons allowed at the library."

We stop dead in our tracks and I say, "Hang on just a blasted minute there, kids. You just drop them books on the ground there for a spell while I ponder this sign."

Resting my hands on the pearled handles of my holstered six-shooters, I wondered just who in the name of Charlton Heston was responsible for this sign. We'd been going to the library every Saturday for the past five years and not once had anyone told me to leave my guns outside.

I had a problem with the shotgun once, but that was an accident. I bent over to pet the rabbits in the children's section and must have caught the trigger on the cage. Blew a hole clean through the Dr. Seuss section.

I rapped on the library door with my little Derringer I keep tucked inside my boxer shorts until I got someone's attention.

"Listen, missy," I said. "I got these kids here who have a hankering to go inside there and get some more of them books and such. Problem is, I got these guns here and sure would hate to leave them in the car where some bad hombre might get at 'em."

"I'm sorry, mister," said the library lady, "but Nevada law says you can't bring those guns inside."

She went on to read me the law where it not only talked about guns, but bombs, too.

"You mean to tell me that if I had a stick of dynamite in my pants I couldn't come inside the library?" I asked.

"Well, no," she said. "Not if we knew it was dynamite you had in your pants. That would be a touchy thing to ask someone without getting sued. But if we found out it was indeed a stick of dynamite you had in your pants, we'd ask you to leave."

The woman hadn't really thought that all the way through. Seemed to me that a feller with dynamite in his pants would be the one calling all the shots.

"How about I just send my kids on in and I'll wait outside here with my guns," I offered as a compromise.

"Sorry, but your kids can't go in without an adult," she replied stiffly.

Her eyes never strayed far from my six-shooters and I could tell she was getting a little nervous watching my trigger finger twitch a bit. It always twitches when someone tries to mess with my guns, my car, or my dog's tennis ball.

A woman walked past on her way in and I asked if she'd take my kids inside with her.

She looked at my guns and my twitching finger and said she'd be more than happy to take my kids anywhere I liked. Folks seem to treat me better when I have my guns on.

The library woman said the only way I could bring my guns into the library was to get written permission from the library director.

"Well why don't you go in and fetch her out here for me," I said. "Have her write something up and I'll sign it."

"I'll go speak with her, but I don't think it's going to be that simple," she said. "She'll probably want to know why you need your guns in the library."

"You just tell her for me that this ain't California and that you never know when someone is going to draw down on you. I'm just as likely to get shot in a library as I am anywhere," I explained. "Let's just say I was over in the magazine section and someone wanted to take my 'Soldier of Fortune' from me. Heck, I'd be a sitting duck without my sidearms."

"I'm sorry. We don't carry 'Soldier of Fortune,'" said the woman.

That got my finger twitching double fast and the woman backed through the doors and into the library where I could see her whispering something to some other folks.

My kids came out a few minutes later and I thanked the woman for taking care of them.

"No problem," she said, eyeballing my pearled handles. "Any time."

I decided to take my kids out for a bite to eat and headed over to the fast food drive-thru. They might have their rules at the library, but I set the rules in my car and I say guns and explosives, at least most types of explosives, knives, hand grenades, torpedoes, rocket launchers and most nuclear devices are welcome.

And until they loosen things up over at the library, we're just going to have to spend our Saturdays down at the gun range, or maybe at the bank where they don't get all shook up when they see a feller walk in with a pair of six-shooters.

Jeff Ackerman is publisher and editor of the Nevada Appeal.