Gun Digest's Where Can You Carry a Concealed Weapon? eShort by Massad Ayoob

Author:Massad Ayoob [Ayoob, Massad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4402-3409-5
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2012-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

In most jurisdictions, your carry permit allows you to be armed in a Wal-Mart…but not in New Mexico if that particular store sells alcoholic beverages.

Ending up here for a CCW error would be a very bad thing…

Then you have the state of Florida, where at this writing, you can suck up all the booze you want in a restaurant with a liquor license. However, if the maitre ‘d says, “Your table will be ready in a few minutes; you can wait in the bar,” the second you step over that threshold you’re committing a Class IV Felony, and your automatic loss of your concealed carry privilege will be the least of your problems. In that state, even if you are not consuming alcohol, you are forbidden to have your gun in any premises that makes more than 50% of its income from serving alcohol by the drink.

In Texas, not only can’t you pack in a bar or a restaurant with a liquor license, you can’t even enter a liquor store with your gun on to purchase a bottle of wine to bring home, unopened, for dinner. The same is true in New Mexico. A few years ago in the Albuquerque area, a madman with a knife attacked a woman in a local Wal-Mart and nearly murdered her. He was plunging his knife into her as an armed citizen leaned over the counter with a licensed-to-carry semiautomatic pistol, and shot him dead. All including the victim, who survived, realized he had saved her life. Alas, anti-gun organizations pushed for his prosecution on the grounds that he was illegally carrying the gun, because Wal-Marts typically sell carry-out alcoholic beverages. What saved this heroic gentleman was the fact that he was in the one Wal-Mart in the area that didn’t have a liquor license.

The lesson is clear. Know the law regarding the carry of firearms in alcoholic beverage establishments, in the community you happen to be in at the moment. There is no national standard.

The simplest and most logical course of action is to stay the hell out of bars when you’re carrying a gun. Even simpler and more logical, just stay the hell out of bars.

One of my mentors was the late, great Lt. Frank McGee, the legendary NYPD man who turned that department’s Firearms Training Unit into a Firearms and Tactics Unit, took an overall tactical approach to training that caused the rate of the officers’ gunfight survival to skyrocket. During one short period in the 1970s, three police officers were shot and killed in gunfights that occurred while they were off-duty in New York drinking establishments. Under Frank’s tutelage, the FTU literally instituted a bloc of “off duty bar-room survival” training.

Frank strongly urged his officers to stay out of bars for one simple reason: bars are full of unknown drunk idiots with guns. I can tell you that he lived what he taught, too. McGee was a man who liked to light up an L&M cigarette and sip a glass of good Scotch…but he liked to do it someplace where it was safe to relax.

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