It’s the hypocrisy that bothers me first. Lawmakers at the National Transportation Safety Board have recommended that states lower the legal blood-alcohol concentration for drivers from .08 percent to .05 percent. For a normal-sized person, that’s going to be little more than a glass of wine with dinner. For a guy like me, that means I’ll only be able to have one bottle of whiskey. In a country that claims it can’t be bothered to run a simple background check before allowing people to legally purchase military grade weapons over the internet, we’re thinking of criminalizing having some wine with dinner and then driving home.
I suppose you could have all the alcohol you want if you drive home in a freaking tank, because as long as there is a gun involved, the government isn’t allowed to do squat.
But even if we ignore the hypocrisy and move past the obvious enforceability problems of turning nearly everybody on the road after 1:00 a.m. into a criminal, there’s still another huge problem with this NTSB recommendation. It’s a “national” standard for what absolutely is a state-by-state concern.
That’s right, I said it, I object to this recommendation on federalism grounds….
