If Liquor were Treated like Guns

Marc Folco has an excellent piece in the South Coast (Massachusetts) Today for August 23, 2009 entitled Open Season: A new twist on the liquor license. It really is must read. Thanks to David Codrea for bringing it to my attention via the War on Guns.

In the article, Marc uses government statistics to make the point that alcohol kills far more people each year through drunk driving and diseases associated with consuming alcohol than are killed with guns. So, rather than implement more gun control, why not apply the same methods to alcohol control?

It's obvious that we need liquor control more than gun control, so let's treat alcohol and alcohol consumers — including myself, a social drinker — the same as we treat guns and gun owners. From now on, you'll need a license to buy and/or consume alcohol and it will cost you $100, renewable every six years. Before your license is issued, you will undergo an extensive background check, get fingerprinted and photographed and take a safety course that stresses the dangers of drinking, alcoholism and drunk driving. Balk at that? It's the same fee and procedure as for a gun license.

But wait! It gets better!

The background check is to see if you have prior convictions of drunk driving (DUI) or if you've been treated for alcoholism. If you have, you will be denied a License to Purchase and Possess Alcohol (LPPA). Also, if you've ever been convicted of a crime that was punishable by a two-year jail term (whether or not you served time), no license for you. Those buying liquor stronger than 80 proof will be required to apply for a Hard-Capacity LPPA.

Upon entering a liquor store, you will be required to present your LPPA and you'll be limited to one case of beer, four regular size bottles of wine (or two big ones), and a fifth of hard liquor per month. And come back in a week to pick it up. Don't forget about that seven-day waiting period. All purchases will be logged into a national computer database, so you can't jump from store to store or even state to state.

If you try to buy more liquor than your monthly quota, the computer will flag it and your license will be revoked and you will pay a heavy fine and serve jail time on the assumption that you are conducting illegal "straw purchases" for drunks, unlicensed persons and kids. It's the reason some politicians want to limit us hunters and shooters to buying one gun a month — they blame us for reselling them to gangbangers to kill their rival "colors" with.

He continues in this vein, citing proposed restriction after restriction, all to keep alcohol out of the hands of people who will abuse it. He doesn't quite go so far as to drag out the "for the children" argument, but he does make the case that buying alcohol would become a pretty oppressive thing to do, and that there are enough "gotcha" provisions that only the truly intrepid would attempt it. The cleverness of this piece is to make the reader empathize with how the legal gun buyer and owner is made to feel like a criminal, and to point out the many ways that the legal gun owner is put in jeopardy for failure to dot all the eyes and cross all the tees.

The really galling part is that every gun owner knows that these laws have no effect on criminals, who, not surprisingly, don't obey laws. Gun owners suspect that the legislators know that too. This suspicion in turn makes gun owners wonder if the legislators are really that out of touch, or is there a more sinister motive at work here.

It all sounds crazy doesn't it? Like a bad dream. But I'm not making any of this up. These are some of the same stupid laws that we have to follow — and some that are being proposed — for legal gun ownership. Now you know how we feel.

Left unsaid, of course, is that keeping and bearing arms is not supposed to be infringed. Yes, there are consequences to misuse, as there should be, but the restrictions in place represent a prior restraint, which is anti-constitutional. Why do people who are smart enough to see that, choose to continue to ignore it.