Unfortunately, there will be undue focus on a beer. The only appropriate amount of alcohol around firearms is zero for at least 8 hours. Many people will talk about how many hours transpired, and that nobody was intoxicated. It will get blown out of proportion now, for sure.
No doubt about it. When I saw that he admitted to having one beer, I knew immediately that was going to be the main part of the story tonight on the news. Not to mention what Letterman and the rest of those idiots are going to be saying tonight too. Although, I don't really care what the idiots say, as I have no respect for them, but you can be sure this "one beer" is what is gonna be talked about from now til Sunday on the news programs.
"Unfortunately, there will be undue focus on a beer."
Probably. But from a site I found, the blood alcohol content of a 210 pound person having one beer is approximately 0.018. It then states "Subtract from this number the percent of alcohol "burned up" during the time elapsed since your first drink. This figure is .015% per hour."
So basically the alcohol content of one beer is very low to begin with and it would basically be out of the system in an hour. The VP waited 3+ hours after lunch to go back out hunting and the incident happened 3 hours after that.
Another site with a calculator said a person weighing 210 pounds drinking one beer over a six hour period (no selection for 6 hours AGO) calc'd a blood alcohol of NEGATIVE 0.05 (obviously because of the formulas, but basically it is saying a zero BAC). The calc showed close to zero in an hour (again assuming drinking beer throughout the one hour time period...not one hour after stopping).
http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/safety/motorist/drunkdriving/calculator.htm
So the beer at lunch is a non-factor...but that doesn't mean the media will jump all over it.