“While our decision is limited to the facts of this case, we presume that the legislature does not intend absurd or unreasonable results.” – Judge Michelle Larkin in MN Court: Law against carrying gun while drunk doesn’t extend to car console [via mprnews.com]
So as long as they don’t intend anything bad to happen everything is all good. How credulous can you get? Of course driving drunk is fairly illegal so it isn’t like the guy was going to get away with something. Additionally, if you are going to go drinking you have to do something with your gat, since carrying it around is not a good idea.
Hard to say if he’ll get away with it. Minnesota state law puts the alcohol limit for carrying while intoxicated at .04 BAC. And driving while intoxicated is .08 BAC. Its possible he fell between those numbers.
Not a good idea? Really? You know…because bar patrons are seldom targeted by thugs.
While it doesn’t sound like this is the case I have always considered rules against designated drivers carrying to be counter productive.
Though I must admit a requirement for designated drivers to open carry both a sidearm and bear spray. Would make their position obvious.
Toothy.
She could eat corn on the cob and not get butter on her lips.
I don’t have confidence in the ethicacy (maybe I made up that word) of any system drug content limits. If you are not acting badly then you should not be arrested or charged with anything. Things like BAC limits are just to make it easier to arrest and convict someone, rather than ensure justice. It’s one of those “sending a message things”. No I don’t drink or do illegal drugs even though I kinda would like to. It is just too dangerous in my estimation.
Things like BAC limits are interesting. I remember when they first came out at 0.1 or so. For a while lots of people were nabbed. Then the rates of DUI started going down. Were people drinking and driving less or were they getting better at spacing the drinking out so as not be be “driving while legally drunk”? Doesn’t really matter because the limit then got lowered to 0.08 and they started nabbing people again.
So if the stated reason for the 0.1 BAC was “to reduce drinking and driving” one could make a strong argument that it worked. If it worked, then why lower it to 0.08? Could it be the stated reason was a secondary reason and something else, like say revenue, was the real reason in the first place? Not that any state like NJ would place revenue over the well being of it’s citizens, would they?
Originally 0.10mg/dl BAC levels were put in place because it was a reasonable expectation that the ‘general somebody’ at 0.10 was prima facie too impaired to drive safely, so that number became the legal ‘bright-line’ standard at which level someone could be convicted of DUI absent a lot if, if not all, other evidence and observable indicators.
Later and continued studies showed that, in fact the ‘general somebody’ at 0.08 was ALSO too impaired to drive safely, so THAT became the standard.
Note that for commercial-drivers-operating-commercially, the standard ‘bright-line’ rule is set at 0.04, and for pilots, 0.02.
It’s nearly inevitable that fairly soon the ‘civilian’ standard will be 0.04 as well. In effect, this will mean that one standard 1.5oz ‘drink’ will put you at or over the limit. . .
Scary stuff.
I posit that things like BAC limits to be pre-crime measures.
I wish they wouldn’t do that. I didn’t spend years studying circuit theory, electromagnetism, and information theory so that people could send messages by writing them into law books.
Narrow victory, nearly pyrrhic. Drunk driver loses his RTKABA as a felon anyway? YA.
MN is about to catch holy hell anyway, better to arm their felons. With Gen. Kelly in as WH Chief of Staff, he’s ending the POS islamo-coddling of the Obama admin, and the cops and the FBI (who the jihadi’s had negotiated to keep out of their neighborhoods in a “screw-America, we’re going to do ‘self-rule’ BS sort of way) are going to go through those neighborhoods like a bowling ball. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/31/kelly-pushes-obama-cve-jihad-chief-out-dhs/
FBI doesn’t even do that for the Amish.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/01/08/countering-violent-extremism-task-force
Joe R.,
The down side to this “extremism” task force: government regards people who refuse to give up their First and Second Amendment rights as extremists as well.
Today, the “extremism” task force may be going after practicing Muslims who endorse, promote, and/or participate in jihad in the U.S. Tomorrow, that extremism task force may be going after people who refuse to let “social justice warriors” beat on attendees at political rallies.
The down-er side to this “extremism” task force: the Federal government was paying muslim communities to ‘police themselves’ in exchange for “outing” trouble-makers in their midst. The latter did not happen. Instead, the muslim groups came back with greater demands of hands-off and no-go zones that had greater autonomy than Indian reservations and Amish / Mennonite communities.
We have no idea how much money and “infrastructure help” was provided to these POS muslim groups, NOR DO WE KNOW HOW MUCH MONEY IT WILL TAKE TO NOW OVERCOME THEM.
They are INJECTED CANCER, from the Ohole admin, and the evil POS (D).
Yeah, so lets not go after the jihadis?
Are you f crazy?
WTF do you think we elected Trump for, to continue to let them run al over us?
!0th Crusade, starts here, now.
Don’t drink and drive. There are countries where a long prison sentence or a DEATH sentence results from drinking and driving.
Contrary to opinions expressed above, drunk driving has caused nearly unimaginable carnage across the country, and the BAC limits are based on measuring of the “average” person’s impairment after having that reached a certain blood alcohol level. There is a measurable impairment even at 0.08. And while it is certainly true that alcoholics can operate fairly proficiently at significantly higher levels, there has to be a line. As many here have noted, vehicles are far more dangerous weapons that firearms in terms of the annual casualty toll.
“we presume that the legislature does not intend absurd or unreasonable results.” – You could find this language in a great many court decisions. It is a canon of interpretation. It means that if a particular reading of a law has absurd results, then the court will not adopt that reading. They don’t always follow it. Like when the court rules that the DUI statute extends to the guy sleeping in a parking lot in the back seat of his car because he has the keys and could drive.
That’s not even the worst case subject. When I was in college I knew a girl that got a DUI because a cop was staking out a parking lot, she comes out with keys to her friend’s car to get a jacket out of it. She gets a DUI because she had the ability to drive and her friends car gets towed out of the parking lot.
Btw…. the conviction stood in court.
The drunk guy wasn’t carrying the piece, he was transporting it. There’s a difference. Besides, criminal statutes in derogation of common law should be strictly construed.
A later search of the car discovered the gun in the console…
Oh, yea, what authority did you have to search the car after a man suspected only of DUI was removed from it?
It’s called the ‘Carroll Doctrine,’ in that, if evidence of a crime is reasonably and with probable cause believed to be contained in a movable vehicle, the vehicle is subject to search, and any evidence seized without a warrant. There is also no time limit on when the search takes place; It can be immediate, or hours later.
In this example, a DUI, if the console might contain elements of the crime (a bottle of booze, obviously), then said console is subject to search. Naturally, anything that happens to be IN said console which is an element of another crime (drugs, guns, bits of a corpse, things like that there) are also subject to seizure as evidence as being in plain view.
Boilerplate law since 1925.
Then there’s the Inventory Exception, wherein, if an agency has a standard policy of impounding and inventorying every DWI vehicle, it can be searched as part of the impound to ensure the security of any personal possessions within.
Some states don’t like this one as much as ‘Carroll.’
Holy shit! Look at the choppers on that one.
Is it still shark week?
Minnesota Demon-crats need a good exorcism, they are so anti American they support any anti freedom or anti Moral laws in order to promote anti -men, they are so illiterate they confuse themselves with all the double speak, shuck and Jive and white want a bee do daping going on in Minnesota legislative system