It’s Clayton Cramer link day here, it seems.  This one on Alcohol and Guns. As a general rule, I agree that alcohol and guns don’t mix. If you’re too sauced to drive a car, you’re too sauced to handle a firearm. But I think that many of the state restrictions designed to prevent this are silly. My prescription would be for states to make it unlawful to carry or use a firearm while intoxicated.  I think that’s a pretty simple solution. It’s the same thing we use for cars, and operating a car and drinking is far more dangerous than carrying and drinking.
13 thoughts on “Alcohol and Guns”
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You know, I never carry and have more than one drink. Another reason that alcohol and guns don’t mix is this: imagine you’re in a self-defense shoot, and you’re over the legal limit. I wouldn’t want to expose myself to that kind of liability, because it becomes easy to paint me as having impaired judgment.
On the flip side, I don’t drink very much when we go out, and I’m often the sober driver. Since Indiana law doesn’t prohibit the carrying of firearms into bars, if I’m the DD, I’m packing.
Florida criminalized brandishing while drunk (as a more serious crime than brandishing alone). You can’t carry at a bar but there is no law against carrying while intoxicated nor a law against defending yourself when intoxicated. Voluntary intoxication is also not a defense under Florida law anymore.
I honestly don’t think it matters how drunk you are while carrying so long as the gun stays in its holster. The degree of judgment necessary to pilot a car down a road is far less than required to determine if someone is trying to kill you.
Er that came out backwards. I meant to say it is far more difficult to drive a car than have a gun holstered on your body.
Sorry, tired from law school finals.
Sorry, tired from law school finals.
Guns Blogs and law school finals don’t mix. :)
I was going to say that Indiana has no law prohibiting you from carrying in a bar, but Ahab beat me to it.
Does Pennsylvania? It’s an academic question. I never go to bars.
PA doesn’t restrict carry in bars or restaurants. We’ve never had a problem.
If you can’t drink and maintain proper decorum, regardless of your vehicular or weapons status, you can’t drink and should not. If one is so immature that drinking changes one’s mindset and mental acuity one is not old enough to drink, period, regardless of how long ago you were born.
One can become too intoxicated to function properly on a physical level, however if one cannot drink and maintain his moral plane and stated philosophy then he has too tenuous a grasp on who he is to be allowed to drink, drive or bear weapons. All three should be denied him under that circumstance. However, the reality is no one wants to be judged by that standard, so we pretend that irresponsibility and lack of morality is universal in all who partake of adult libations. Such is not true and never was. But it makes our weaker brothers feel our equal.
The biggest single cause of losing a CCW permit in North Carolina is packing when busted for DWI, and you aren’t ever gonna get it back.
The NC Carry laws scare the shit out of me. From how I read them, I can’t even take my wife to dinner if the restaurant has a wine list. Or god forbid a place like TGI Friday’s or Applebees that has a bar. Leaving a gun in a car strikes me as an easier way to get that gun stolen (because they might just take the whole car too!) and having a gun stolen often means adding a murder weapon to the pool.
We don’t have any such restriction in Pennsylvania. Even if we did, well, they can’t exactly spot a concealed weapon now can they?
Oregon has no laws about carrying in bars and the guy that did my CCW class had a funny story. A bunch of guys went into a bar and each were carrying openly. They ordered food but no alcoholic drinks. They ate and played pool. One of the customers called the cops who showed up and asked a few questions. Cops went to the customer and said, why did you call us? “They’ve got guns!!!”
Nothing illegal about that, sorry, goodbye.
That being said, small towns tend to be more relaxed than the concrete jungles. For example, the lady that runs the liquor store in town, does so with a .357 revolver on her hip. Before she bought the place, the previous store owner ran a combo liquor AND gun store.
Gotta love small northwest towns.
TN doesn’t allow us to carry in places that serve alcohol, and to the best of my recollection, carrying under the influence is too. Zero tolerance, I think.
As far as I’m concerned, the BAC limit for driving works for packing, too.
No, but if they catch you carrying in a “Bar” in NC, they charge you and you loose your permit and possibly your guns (not sure if its a felony)
So its exactly like carrying concealed without a permit at all.