A U.S. appeals court on Friday declared unconstitutional a nearly 158-year-old federal ban on home distilling, calling it an unnecessary and improper means for Congress to exercise its power to tax.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled in favor of the nonprofit Hobby Distillers Association and four of its 1,300 members.
They argued that people should be free to distill spirits at home, whether as a hobby or for personal consumption including, in one instance, to create an apple-pie-vodka recipe.
The ban was part of a law passed during Reconstruction in July 1868, in part to thwart liquor tax evasion, and subjected violators to up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Yeah, gotta take courses for some of those right? Get a licence? Some have safety standards so you know what you get and come with instructions on how to operate them?
There are rules and regulations on almost everything you listed. Because health and safety regulations are written in blood.
Or, you know, be indifferent to human suffering and societal cost and basic common sense. Very American vibe these days.
Please take your soap box over to the gun control communities, where real lives can be saved. Your concern about home brewing is misallocated, hyperbolic and patently false.
You do not need anything to work on cars or fly rc aircraft (within limits) and can freely play with various lithium batteries in many different manners.
You are talking about it being common sense to protect people from themselves, yet you could just as easily say it should be common sense to beleive everyone will take precautions before playing with gasoline. That’s the funny thing. There’s no such thing as common sense. “Common sense” is a bullshit concept for people to act like everyone knows something just because it’s part of the complainer’s life experience already. You know gasoline is dangerous but can be controlled. I know people generally know enough about gasoline by time they can interact with it to be safe. But if someone never interacted with it before, they’d have no idea how it behaves or what dangers are associated with it. Like, would you know how to store fertilizer in a way that it won’t combust? To farmers, it’s common sense. That doesn’t make it universally common knowledge. Or should it be obvious that snow is very slippery and might require you to drive at 1/4 speed? If you live in a place that gets snow, it’s common sense. Yet, every year, some place just south of the usual snow line gets snow for the first time in a decade and the streets become undrivable with cars piled up from residential-speed crashes. It’s not common sense if the cars have always, undoubtedly, stopped in a predictable manner, even in rain.
Regulations notoriously lack hobbyists’ level of common sense anyway. There’s often a gap between what’s legal and whether inexperienced people would even think to check if some activity is legal. The only tip off is if certain supplies are regulated.
Actually no. There’s no restriction on you doing any of that on your own or at home. Just like anyone can cook whatever they want in their house even if they don’t know how to properly handle food, there’s nothing stopping anyone from hopping on Amazon and grabbing an RC kit or buying a pressure cooker, etc. Common sense and personal responsibility are kind of a big part of individuality and independence. For hobbyists generally they’re not endangering the public, just themselves. Which is your god given right lol.
Funnily there are laws around some obviously dangerous things (like making bombs) but not others (like owning a muzzle loading cannon or flame thrower) generally don’t (IANAL, check your local laws).
Ahh, you can just go buy a gun and use it in your own home with no license or background check eh? Rah rah America I guess.
As for the rest, there are layers upon layers of consumer protection regulations that go into limiting what parts you can buy, what can be imported, what quality it is, how it should work. I guess if you’re gonna be real intense you can go buy some lithium cells, motors, 3d print parts etc, but outside of that there is a vast framework of overlapping regulations trying to keep stupid people from hurting themselves or others. Your ignorance of the systems protecting you doesn’t mean they aren’t there or that they aren’t important, and they probably contribute to the illusion of competence and divine support so many have. It’s not Good keeping you safe, it’s actually the government.
I mean this article is about an American court over turning an American law…so yes, we’re talking about American regulation.
And bad news for us, there is very little consumer protection out there. There is a lot of financial reason to not make horribly dangerous products (America is a pretty litigious nation), but I think you are drastically overestimating the amount of testing and protection that happens by any regulating body.
We can’t even keep illegal drugs from coming in on shipping containers using our normal ports, in what world is a regulatory body inspecting every piece of electronics and every lithium battery that comes into the country. It’s why so many knock offs and faulty devices have issues so often. Just browse Amazon or EBay (not even getting into Alibaba) for 15 minutes and you’ll find cheaply made, never inspected devices all over the place.
And that isn’t even getting into the stuff that is well built, but only if you follow the proper instructions, why do you think we have to have national wide campaigns every thanksgiving just to try and keep people from burning their houses down while deep frying a turkey?
Then there are the tons of hobbies and activities that are just dangerous, we don’t stop anyone from free climbing a mountain or jumping a gorge on a motorcycle, cause once again, it’s not the governments job to keep individuals safe from themselves, not really. The job of government is to keep society safe from individuals, to keep you safe from others, to stop them from interfering with your rights (and it’s debatable how much they even really do that sadly).
But as far as Uncle Sam is concerned, you want to try and slack line across a 100 foot fall, or make home made booze, or eat rare chicken (at home) that’s your choice.
Hello Canadian!
Yes, assuming you are buying a non nfa gun you’re allowed to have from a person instead of a ffl holder you can completely legally buy a gun with no license or background check.
There are many additional jurisdictions that place restrictions on that practice though.
You’re wildly overestimating the volume and enforcement of what can be called consumer protection regulations.
Take canning, for example: there’s no law against advertising some device that can’t reach 15lbs of pressure, the requirement set forth by the fda to prevent botulism, as appropriate for canning even for low acid foods like green beans that are the exact target for botulism.
There’s no law against selling a lithium battery powered device that relies on the controller built into its specific power brick and it’s specifically wired usbc terminated cable for overcharge or overheat safety and reliably catches fire when it’s plugged up to any other power brick/usbc cable combination.
Idk about Canadian canning laws, but I know for a fact that there are no protections about the other example in the great white north because the same design has been all over insurance claims for house fires there too.
To answer your gun “question” the answer is generally no, it’s DEFINITELY no where I live but gun laws vary. I own guns, they required licensing and background checks and waiting periods. My drone had to be registered with the FAA to fly legally and even then many places are completely off limits to me.
Americans tend to be obsessed with convenience and will sacrifice almost anything or anyone to increase their convenience in even the smallest way, including rejecting the concepts of public and personal health and safety.
Actually no: there are no courses, licensing, rules, or regulations for a hobbyist (which is who this ruling affects) on the majority of the things that I listed (cars, RC/drones, canning, making kombucha, and even to a certain extent guns. We trust adults to be adults and learn the skills required to do these things because the risk is almost entirely to them.
If we had to ban everything that had a chance of causing harm to people, shouldn’t we ban gas stoves? Those could cause an explosion if someone was careless and left the gas running.
A dude distilling 5 gallons of wash in his backyard for his own personal consumption is not the same as a distillery processing 1000 gallons of wash.
Ironically gas stoves produce as much of the carcinogen benzene as having a smoker in your kitchen. This likely has contributed to the rise in non smoker lung cancer, which is more prevalent in women (who are more likely to be using said stove).
We need to ban gas stoves, but not for the reasons you state.
Why did you jump from “courses, licensing, rules or regulations” to “ban everything”? Those are two completely different arguments.
The companies who build gas stoves for public use should 100% be regulated.
Because this is a thread about a reversal on a ban on distilling. My original comment mentioned all of those hobbies outside of any context of regulation/licensing due to the high risks inherent in their activities without any restrictions in place.
Responder tried to argue that they all have restrictions. I said that it was false and then reiterated my main point, which is being glad (as a member of the homebrew community) that home distilling is now allowed, banning it was dumb, and everyone screaming in this thread about keeping it banned because of “dAnGeR” is unreasonable
Actually yes: Consumer protection regulations exist for cars, RC/drones and parts, canning supplies, and certainly guns. All those components are set up so that they function a certain way, more dangerous versions are restricted, and governments try at the very least to educate people about the dangers of just DIY stuff (e.g. safe home canning). Your illusion of competent adults is created, in part, by a framework of regulatory guardrails.
Where did I say ban everything that’s dangerous? Do you want to have no restrictions on anything? Lots of things that are dangerous are banned or restricted, and you’re probably alive and healthy today in part for that.
Dude distilling 5 gallons of wash with no understanding of how it works, the danger to him or his neighbours, no regulation of the parts or ingredients that go into his setup is a menace and an accident waiting to happen.
TY for making my point for me, it was really nice of you. Legalization is what allows those manufactured safeguards to exist. Without legalization, there is no way a company is going to sell a still that meets a UL safety metric. Which in turn causes anyone who wants to do this to use a cobbled together rig that’s probably leaking fuel or gases.
And lots of things that are dangerous are not banned or restricted, and are in fact extremely normalized. I could go buy fireworks in a tent on the side of the road, without needing to provide my age or any sort of training – and fireworks are VASTLY more dangerous than distilling.
Again, this is a product of prohibition and not having access to safe equipment or information. The cost/barriers to entry for home distilling are also very high. There is a minimum amount of research that you would need to do in order to understand what the procedure is and what equipment you would even need.
Finally, I will once again state that the dangers of home distilling are extremely overblown. When New Zealand legalized home distilling there were zero reports of methanol poisoning from home-distillation, caused 0.14% of residential fires, and 0 deaths. 1 2 3.
Someone is literally more likely to have a fire and/or die from an unattended candle.
What? No. Equipment is so trivial it can be home made and still work.
Probably clearer if i wrote: “the cost OR barriers to entry are very high”
A cheap liquor still off the shelf is like $300, which is definitely not impulse buy territory IMO and before even getting to this point you’d have to have done at least a trivial amount of research to have learned how to distill and what machines to look at in the first place.
Alternatively, they could build their own. But that would require doing an extensive amount of research on how to build a still, which in turn would end up providing you with a bunch of safety information regardless.
This is definitely not common knowledge.
I still wouldn’t say they’re very high. My grandpa built one out of scrap and rubber tubing back in the days of communism in my country. $300 was a fortune noone could even dream of at the time, while alcohol was “sort of currency”.
Moonshining back then was extremely common even if it was illegal.
I don’t consider watching bunch of YT tutorials or equipment that can literally be home made to be an any sort of meaningful entry barrier.
Do you need a license to operate a gas stove or a propane grill?
Can anyone make a gas stove or propane grill? Can you rig up your own home-made propane tank? Can you get your propane from a rando who mixed it at home? Are there rules and restrictions on ventilation and how houses are built or where you can use your grill? Be reasonable.
Yes, yes, no but you can probably get bootleg propane (it’s happening in India right now), depends on jurisdiction.
Anyone can make gas from a stove or a propane tank explode, no special talent needed for that and it happens all the time.