Following last weekend’s fatal shooting in LoDo, city leaders and bar owners are once again asking the question: what is to be done? Early Sunday morning, just after last call, police responded to a loud argument at a parking lot on 18th & Market. Long story short: someone fired a shotgun at police and the police fired back, killing him. Then, a companion to the man who was shot, picked up the shotgun and – he’ll be winning no “who has the highest IQ?” contests – also fired at police. The police shot him, too, wounding him.

The scene in LoDo at 2:00 AM is obviously and undeniably dangerous. You have a large concentration of bars, an abruptly cut-off alcohol supply, and a vast herd of jackasses. Drunk jackasses. Ergo, you’re going to have trouble. So far, the best plan the city has come up with has been staggered closing times. The logic is: reduce the number of frat boys, bangers, and hipsters on the street at any given time by staggering the times the bars close their doors. Problem is, bars do a large percentage of their business in the hours between midnight and 2:00 AM. No self-respecting bar owner would dare close down early just for the sake of the greater public good – not when there’s shots of Jaeger to be sold and kids in their Old Navy and FUBU best willing to the buy them.

As a reformed barfly, let me humbly suggest a counterintuitive solution: extend the hours of operation and make last call, say, 4:00 AM or even – dare we dream? – 5:00 AM. Few of us have the stamina to stay out to such an absurdly late hour. Patrons will thus self-regulate, wearing themselves out and wandering home at their own pace. The result? A safer LoDo.