TexasCHLforum.com

mr.72 wrote:

frazzled wrote: Cut the garbage. Guns and booze don't miz just as cars and booze don't mix. If you think you should be able to drink while caryring you need to stay home and not endanger the rest of our families-just your own.

I can say the same thing about "booze" mixing with all kinds of other of your rights, those protected by the Constitution as well as those you might hold dear that are not protected by the Constitution, and the argument will be just as valid.

Let's have a sobriety checkpoint at the entrance of a polling place.

Howabout you cannot exercise your freedom of speech after you have had a drink.

Or maybe you cannot be free to choose your own religion while you have been drinking.

Maybe your right to a fair trial only applies if you do not drink. Or maybe your right to raise your own children ends where your right to drink alcohol begins. Maybe even your very right to reproduce should be restricted to only those who don't drink.

This is a ridiculous argument. Drinking and driving, as an issue, has enjoyed some special status of broad and sweeping rights infringement in this country for decades. You can do anything to bend the Constitution into a complete spiral and ignore the rule of law as long as it has the intent of reducing "drunk driving". We are spreading this idealism of special-status infringement to other things as well, such as hate crimes and now even those who claim to support our right to keep and bear arms are supporting this infringement when it comes to carrying a gun. Why don't we just outlaw drinking instead? Of course, if we criminalize alcohol, then only the criminals will have alcohol.

Point is that rights infringement, overreaching government efforts to control behavior and special-class laws do not work, period. Drunk driving laws are not stopping drunk driving. Banning alcohol didn't stop the sale of alcohol. Banning carrying and drinking is not going to stop the practice. If you've ever known an alcoholic, you know good and well that stopping them from drinking from some external influence is impossible, and they are going to drink first and then add on every other thing they do in their lives. Drinking and anything doesn't really mix. But if drinking and <insert anything here> can mix, then you dang well better be able to drink and do the things that you have a Constitutionally-protected right to do. Drinking does not require one to waive their rights before they can take a drink.