Carrying? When Impaired?

When do you carry? When don’t you? What is impaired?

Throughout the training community, regardless of where one gets their paycheck, there is a tremendous emphasis on shooting, followed by how to do so quickly. Accuracy concerns follow that to various degrees. Interestingly, in the research I look at, there is a consensus that “we” collectively overemphasize shooting speed—a speed that is driven by an auditory stimulus rather than a visual one.

 

Additionally, there is ongoing discussion on when and how to carry it. Those conversations often address what to carry when there is a need always to carry. Seldom, though, do these conversations address not carrying, except to avoid getting caught in or circumventing non-permissive environment (NPE) restrictions.  

 

Different Analysis

Have often do you consider not carrying?

There is a common and repeated refrain about not carrying, not at all, if you have had even a sip of alcohol. Is that realistic? Is it reasonable?  

What about when your impairment is due to medication?

My best man in my first wedding was an active street cop at a well-known West Coast agency. That organization’s policy mandated officers carry their handgun, badge, and cuffs anytime they entered the city, without exception, regardless of why. This sounds like a recipe for any number of problems.

 

Caveat –

I am not a physician, a pharmacologist, or a toxicologist. I’m just a retired cop with some exposure to conducting under-the-influence investigations (alcohol & drugs), discussing policies like this with administrators, and dealing with the aftermaths of several surgeries – specifically anesthesia and pain meds.

Medical Considerations

Let’s look at anesthesia and pain medication first. We will talk about anesthesia and monitored sedation without considering regional or local anesthesia. With general anesthesia, the goal is to render the patient (you) unconscious and unable to move. A physician or a nurse anesthesiologist can do it. Sedation relaxes you while pointing you towards a chemically induced sleep. Both can be done through intravenous or inhalation. Afterward, you go to recovery – where the goal is to bring you out from under the effects and back to some level of function.

If you are being anesthetized, there is a real likelihood you will come out from under its effects while also being administered pain medication.

NIH on Anesthesia

Before a recent surgery that was going to involve general anesthesia, I had to think about even bringing a gun with me on the drive there. Since I wasn’t going to be in any condition to drive, let alone make lethal force decisions for a while, after being released, no firearm went with me. While I considered recent open-source reporting about CONUS threats, there was a definite reality about my diminished capabilities that I had to consider.

 

On the post-anesthesia/sedation discharge instructions, the hospital noted I should not:

Drive a car, operate machinery or power tools;

Make any important decisions;

 

Regarding the prescription pain meds, one of the cautions is that you can suffer from confusion.

 

Except when I was free from the influence of any prescription pain meds, I didn’t carry in the aftermath. Enough said.

Alcoholic Beverages

Most of us are probably aware that consuming alcoholic beverages can measurably reduce inhibitions (all of them) while leading to poor decision-making. That is generally at higher levels of blood alcohol content. What is too high, though?

 

If you drink, is it possible to always avoid a beer, a glass of wine, or a limited amount of distilled spirits? Your environment and the culture you live in can impact that math. That issue became a discussion at a previous workplace. There, two categories of employees—sworn law enforcement and corrections officers who had completed additional training—were allowed to carry concealed firearms away from work. One of the most respected administrators I ever worked for raised the question about what was impaired, and it was kicked around in multiple conversations. We looked at acceptable blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limits.

 

One Level

Nationally, 0.08% BAC became the presumptive legal limit for impairment in 1998. It became California’s standard in 1990.

0.08% BAC. If 0.08% is the standard at which one is too impaired to operate a motor vehicle, should that carry over to making deadly force decisions? Or should there be a greater expectation?

A Lower Level

What about the commercial driver’s standard of 0.05%? Those with commercial driver’s licenses live under a 0.05% BAC standard. It appears this level can be maintained by having just under one drink per hour.

0.05% BAC. This level does reduce the allowable amount for every type of beverage. Given what we know about the effects of consuming alcohol and decision-making, if one is going to drink in public, this standard could be easily explained both organizationally and personally.

What is the practical difference between the two levels? According to the Cleveland Clinic, at 0.05%, “you may feel uninhibited and have lowered alertness and impaired judgment.” At a 0.08% BAC, “you may have reduced muscle coordination, find it more difficult to detect danger, and have impaired judgment and reasoning.”

Whoops

One of the events that precipitated this discussion involved a corrections employee drawing a concealed handgun during a musical event, pointing it upward with a band in the background, and filming it. Then, like most other problematic behaviors these days, they shared the footage on social media. Yes, I’m aware of just how many fails are involved in that. 

 

Again, the best call is not to drink when armed.

 

While both policy and statutory law can set the perimeters for what one can do carrying, neither can address or even anticipate every possibility. Ultimately, it is up to you — with the concealed firearm — to make appropriate decisions under the individual circumstances.

 

Final Thought

Regardless of how one defines “impaired,” each of us will display it differently. Having a quantified standard that can be met and explained is a much better idea than having something subject to interpretation by a variety of people.