RICHMOND

Mike Standing owns an Oceanfront restaurant. He owns guns. He can’t see a reason to combine the pair.

“Why would somebody want to have a gun in a restaurant?” said Standing, of Waterman’s Surfside Grille in Virginia Beach. “In case the crab legs came alive and got angry?”

Standing’s question is a relevant one now that a bill to let permitted owners bring a concealed weapon into bars and restaurants has passed both houses of the legislature. The House approved it Thursday.

The measure, SB476, lets people bring concealed handguns into bars and restaurants – as long as they don’t drink while they’re there.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Emmett Hanger Jr., R-Augusta, requires people with concealed weapon permits to notify a designated restaurant employee of their firearm.

The bill makes it a misdemeanor crime for the person to consume alcohol. Current law lets a person carry a gun into an eatery only if the weapon is visible.

“I’ve been waiting for this bill for years,” said Del. Harvey Morgan, R-Gloucester. “I thought it was absolutely insane for someone who was legally carrying a firearm to find a way to dispose of it to get a bite to eat.”

Opponents of the bill argued that no good can come from it.

“Guns and alcohol don’t mix,” said Del. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond. “They lead to trouble.”

After a passionate debate, the bill passed 62-36 on a largely partisan vote.

While Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is expected to veto the measure, he said earlier this week he hadn’t yet read the bill or decided what to do.

“My strong feeling,” Kaine said in an interview, “has been that bars and Pizza Huts where families go to have pizza with their kids, that more weapons in those places does not lead to public safety.”

Kaine also is expected to veto another measure passed Thursday by the House .

That bill, SB436, would allow people without concealed weapons permits to put handguns in a locked glove compartment or other interior compartment of a car.

State law now requires those weapons be in plain sight in a vehicle. The bill, opposed by police, passed on a largely party-line vote, 69-29.

Kaine hasn’t said what he’ll do with the bill, but he vetoed a similar one two years ago.

It takes a two-thirds majority – 67 votes if the full House is present – to override a veto.

 Staff writer Warren Fiske contributed to this report.

 Richard Quinn, (757) 222-5119, richard.quinn@pilotonline.com