This from TexGov Greg Abbott:
Well excuse me if I don’t turn a few cartwheels and stuff. Fifty years ago, you could see liquor stores’ delivery scooters putting around all over every city and town in South Africa, painted in the various stores’ livery.
And, just so everyone understands my scorn, you could order beer and wine for home delivery. Also gin, vodka, brandy, Scotch and rum. Fifty years ago. In South Africa.
I once noted that as one moves south from the northern states in the U.S., the gun laws become less stupid, and the liquor laws become more so. In Chicago, I could buy single-malt Scotch at the supermarket, but I couldn’t buy a gun anywhere. Down here, even oh-so-cosmopolitan Plano became a “liquor” retail area (as opposed to just beer & wine) only about five years ago, but I have about fifteen gun stores within a couple miles of my house.
There are a lot of things to like about the South, but their liquor laws are not among them.
So: wake me up when I can order my favorite Scotch and gin from Total Wines or Spec’s, and have them delivered to my front door.
Actually, check that. Wake me up when I can buy my booze from Amazon. Like you can in Britain (where you can’t buy anything made by Colt).
And one last thing: I don’t enjoy the paternalistic tone of government “allowing” me to do anything, and being advised to do something “responsibly“. Fuck you, fuck your responsibility, and thanks for nothing, you paternalistic asshole.
Now send the Texas State Guard down to police the Rio Grande, and stop pissing around with chickenshit like this.
I’ve now experienced gun laws and liquor laws in three places:
NYC:
Gun laws: Apply for target pistol permit in person at 1 Police Plaza in NYC, accompanied to a postal money order (not bank money order, not personal check, not cash, not credit card, POSTAL money order) for the fees (north of $200 over 20 years ago) and two passport photos under 6 months old. Wait nine months for application to be processed. Receive letter in mail telling you your permit was approved. Go back to 1 Police Plaza (accompanied by two more passport photos, the others are now over 6 months old), sit in front of bitch who TRIES to piss you off so she can make a last minute denial. Receive permit assuming she’s unsuccessful. You now have 30 days to purchase a single pistol (with restrictions on type/barrel length, etc because it’s a TARGET permit), 72 hours after which you must bring said pistol and sales receipt back to 1 Police Plaza for “inspection” (registration), and they KEEP your receipt (they don’t tell you this, and no they won’t make a photo copy for your records). If you want another pistol, apply for purchase permit (30-60 days), purchase and register as above for every pistol purchased. More than three (IIRC) requires you to have a safe. Oh, a target permit means you MUST belong to a gun club, and you can transport your pistol from home to the club unloaded and locked, separate ammo. And no it can’t be loaded at home, why would you want to, it’s a target permit? Carry license? If you’re not a cop or a celebrity, forget it (Robert DeNiro has a NYC carry permit). Want a rifle? Similar process, except it all takes place in QUEENS, NY and you don’t need a separate permit for each purchase. Oh, the M1 Garand is an “Assault Weapon” unless you remove the bayonet lug.
Alcohol: Every supermarket has a beer aisle, as do delis/convenience stores. Wine and hard stuff sold at liquor stores.
NJ:
Guns: Not quite as bad as above, but still a separate permit for each pistol. Applications take place at local cop-shop and turnaround/headaches vary widely by town, the one I lived in was actually pretty good. AWB in place, 15 round mag limit.
Liquor: Beer, wine and liquors all sold only in liquor stores. All grocery stores have a liquor store in the same building. Some bars sell “package goods”, meaning you can take a six-pack home for an exorbitant price.
Pennsylvania:
Guns: Purchase rifles and pistols with driver’s license (and Federal background check). Shall-issue CCW. No AWB. The local fire-and-rescue squad held a gun raffle last weekend as a fund raiser.
Booze: Some grocery stores sell beer, but you can only buy up to a 12-pack at a time. (My wife’s nephew tried to buy three 12 packs, he was told he could pay for them all at once but he HAD to make three trips to the car with them). Distributors sell beer in whatever quantity you wish. Wine and liquor are sold in state-run stores. Go to the closest one because the prices are the same in all of them (set by the state). Oh, the liquor prices are comparable to what I said in NJ (750ml of Glenmorangie for $44 out the door, 750 ml of Jim Beam Black for $25). Beer prices are a bit higher (maybe $2 a 12-pack) at the closest distributor, but it’s possible prices are lower elsewhere.
While odd, the PA liquor laws are manageable, especially since the beer distributor is right across the street from the grocery store and the state liquor store is a mile up the block.
Here in Britain I can order any type of alcohol in any quantity to be delivered anywhere I like from any number of private enterprises. Guns of any kind, (including peashooter airguns), nope.
Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to simple repeal any existing laws that originally forbid the practice? You know, rather than passing even more laws?
I like the idea of any new regulation passed requires two older regulations to be voided or repealed. Get rid of all the old stuff, like spitting on the sidewalk and can’t buy beer before noon on Sunday. I can still remember driving out to the county line to buy alcohol, back when staying with a friend in a dry county.
I fondly recall the summer of ’73 when I spent my vacation driving a delivery truck for a liquor store while listening to the Watergate hearings on the radio. Michigan, not Texas, but still a fine way to keep the population of drunks, most of whom were regular deliveries, off the roads.
While your scorn is understandable (and shared), I think I do believe it’s Greg, not Jim Abbott.
Thankee. Jim Abbot was a boxer. Greg, not so much.
/1984
It’s gotten a lot better than it was in Texas.
In the early 80’s when I was first stationed there, the base I was on was in a Dry County.
No bars, but they had “clubs” your could join. One had a annual membership of 1 whole dollar and was next door to a great steak place (don’t know if there any bad steak places in Texas) and you could order from their menu and have it brought to you in the Club.
Having access to the Class 6 store on base, being in a Dry County it didn’t bother me a lot. More annoying and weirder was all the shopping malls and most stores except for Stop and Robs closed on Sundays. Big culture shock after transferring from a base in California where everything seemed to be open all the time.
Waaaaaay back in the day I was an early teen and lived in Oklahoma, a dry state at that time. That meant we could get home delivery of any wine or liquor the family’s bootlegger had in stock. Since there was a strong bond based on trust between the family and that bootlegger, we teens could take delivery of our parents weren’t home.
It was said that the system was nearly perfect:
The Baptists had their law forbidding Demon Booze,
The bootleggers had their businesses, and
The drinkers had home delivery.
The problem was that the State didn’t have its alcohol tax revenue. After my family moved away a governor ordered a crackdown on the bootleggers and the parched voters voted Oklahoma wet.
Believe it or not it’s only been 2 years since adults here in Indiana have been “allowed” to purchase alcohol on Sunday. Let that sink in for a minute. Imagine not being able to purchase a (fill in the blank) because someone else doesn’t want you to.
Still, no one is allowed to sell alcohol within 1000 feet of a church.
Wanted to buy a gun at Rural King a few years ago and was told I’d also have to purchase a hardshell case and a lock as it is against state law to walk out of a store with a new gun in hand within 1000 feet of a school. I told em to stick it. The depth of the insanity in that one is inestimable.
The Blue Press, July 2019, page 10. An article about Barbeque Guns made me immediately think of You in Texas.
https://drizly.com/
Specifically, this law is about letting you buy beer and wine for delivery with your food (like beer with pizza or wings). You’ve been able to contract a courier (like drizly) from a package shop for a while in Texas.
In Japan you could buy beer from a vending machine, day or night, back in the 70s. Now the do-gooders have restricted the hours. I miss the original, but not the brewed for export, Kirin Beer. The export, dry, ichiban, and all the rest you can buy here is just bad.
KY is quite liberal on guns, (no carry permit needed anymore) but has wet and dry counties. I believe the closest building to every dry county line is a liquor store, but I haven’t seen them all. I might still get a permit just for reciprocity with neighboring states. Or not.
MarkD, Arkysaw now same-same. Tennessee OTOH, with a RINO supermajority and RINO Governor, has both alcohol and firearms laws that are a prime example of what happens when you let Baptists run things. Prime example: Finally got beer and wine sales approved in grocery stores. Can’t buy either before noon on Sunday.
Oklahoma allowed the sale of “strong” beer (ie greater than 3.2%) and wine in grocery and convenience stores and cold beer in liquor stores about a year ago. As an old man my memory is failing. Hard stuff is available in liquor stores.
I used to travel quite a bit on business and the complexity of state liquor laws always amazed me. I too have a dollar “membership” a in Mesquite Texas club that allowed me to buy a couple of cold long necks in a steak house. I believe that the blue laws in the south were designed to make the process as difficult as possible so that the government wouldn’t be accused of encouraging or promoting drinking. The prohibition movement of the late 1800s was responsible for the many southern liquor laws. Read up on the prohibitionists – they originated a lot of the tactics that are now used by gun control people.
Interesting that the church hasn’t always opposed liquor. You’ll find Elijah Craig brand bourbon on the shelves of your local liquor store. Elijah Craig was a master distiller and Baptist minister. Lots of people claim that he invented bourbon. When I meet my final reward I hope to discuss the finer points of theology and good bourbon with the Reverend Craig.
The post office’s ban on shipping liquor through the mail dates back to the days of prohibition. The gov didn’t want your cousin in Canada mailing you a case of Canadian Club every month so they put booze on the bad list along with birth control “devices” and other nasty stuff. You can ship booze by other carriers such as UPS depending on state law. The big question has always been who will accept delivery at your residence. If the UPS guy hands the box to your 12 year old – or leaves it on the front porch – is he not supplying alcohol to a minor?
I grew up in New Jersey (for the record I moved out of that shite hole almost 40 years ago) back in the day when the drinking age in Jersey was 21 and New York was 18. I lived about 15 minutes from the New York border so we made lots of beer runs to Greenwood Lake New York. We bought Rolling Rock and Boone’s Farm wine for the girls because it was the cheapest stuff you could get. Both gave you horrible hang overs. Then I joined Uncle Sam’s navy and found the joys of San Miguel at 50 centavos – eight cents – a bottle. You could see the germs swimming around in the bottle so you hoped that the alcohol was strong enough to kill them. Must have worked because I’m sill around.
Back when I worked out of our Garland office, we used to go to the Skillman street pub which was in Richardson I believe. You had to have a membership card, but no charge. Some colleagues from Germany came over for training on a new system, and we signed them up. I flew back with them to aid in installing the system, and they told their friends there “in Texas you have to have a license to drink, but you can buy a gun in Walmart.”
It’s not “Who will let me…?” but, “Who’s going to stop me?”
Yes, I’ve reached that age and attitude. And the longer I’m around, the more I’m going to lean on my Crippled Veteran Card