Behind the Holster
Behind the Holster is the official Concealed Coalition podcast hosted by nationally recognized firearms instructor Jody Picou, with regular appearances from cohosts Yates Crawford and Matt Wheeler. Each episode delivers practical, real-world insight into responsible gun ownership, concealed carry training, firearms safety, CCW laws, and everyday protection strategies—told by the instructors who train thousands of Americans each year.
Whether you’re preparing for your first concealed carry class, want to understand your state’s CCW requirements, or simply want to become a more confident and capable protector, this podcast breaks down the topics that matter most: holster safety, defensive mindset, de-escalation, generational gun misinformation, parenting and firearms, common CCW mistakes, home-defense fundamentals, and real stories from the training range.
Our mission is to educate, equip, and empower citizens with the knowledge and skills needed to carry responsibly. Each episode is designed to cut through confusion, debunk myths, and provide clear, actionable guidance on how to train smarter and stay safer—whether you carry daily or are just beginning your journey.
If you're searching for concealed carry tips, firearms training advice, CCW law insights, or expert-backed gun safety information, you've found your home. Tune in, learn from the best, and get Behind the Holster.
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Behind the Holster
Alcohol and Firearms: What Happens If You Use Your Gun After Drinking
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Host Jody Picou is joined by Austin Davis, Concealed Coalition's National Director of Training, for a conversation on one of the most frequently asked questions in concealed carry classes: what happens when alcohol and firearms intersect. Davis has been a commissioned police officer since 1995, holds more than 45 instructor certifications, and has spent over 30 years teaching crime prevention to law enforcement, corporations and private citizens.
State law on carrying with alcohol in your system is not uniform, and the variation is wider than most permit holders expect. Louisiana allows carrying at a blood alcohol concentration up to 0.05. Every other state Davis has taught in requires zero alcohol to carry outside the home. Texas requires any establishment drawing more than 51 percent of its revenue from alcohol sales to post signage, but other states apply comparable thresholds without a signage requirement, leaving the burden of knowing on the person carrying.
Davis describes what a responding officer actually does at the scene of a defensive gun use. Officers separate a scene into victim, suspect, witnesses and bystanders, then begin gathering facts. Glassy eyes and the smell of an alcoholic beverage go into the report. Credit card records and bar video footage are routinely pulled, so understating how much you drank creates a credibility problem long before anyone reaches the legal analysis.
The discussion returns to the three capabilities Davis argues decide a defensive encounter: skilled decision making, solid procedural skills and emotional control. Alcohol suppresses prefrontal cortex function, which governs judgment and impulse control, and produces a self-deception that leaves a person less able to recognize their own impairment. They also cover the three fights that follow any use of force: the criminal case, the civil case and the social consequences. A criminal acquittal resolves only the first, and in civil court the standard is preponderance of the evidence rather than beyond a reasonable doubt.
Neither host argues against drinking. Both argue for deciding in advance where the firearm goes, who you are drinking around and how you get home. That includes vehicle storage, since a glove box is not a safe, and a thirty dollar cable safe anchored to the frame defeats the snatch and grab break-in behind most vehicle gun thefts. This episode is sponsored by Kangaroo Carry. Responsible carry begins with the planning done before a situation arrives, not the decisions made inside it.
Behind the Holster is educational, approachable, and judgment-free — focused on protection, not politics. Whether you're brand new to firearms or have years of experience carrying, this podcast is here to help you better understand gun safety, personal protection, and the responsibilities that come with owning and carrying a firearm.
For more information, as well as in-person and online training options and additional firearm safety resources, visit the Concealed Coalition website:
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What's up, y'all, and welcome to another episode of Behind the Holster, a concealed coalition podcast. My name is Jody Pico. I'm gonna be your host today. And I will tell you that we've got man, probably probably, I don't know if I would call it the best topic, but it's in the top 10 topics that I think we get asked about in concealed carry classes and other classes, and it has to do with alcohol and firearms. Now I'm from Louisiana where you go into a gas, every gas station is a liquor store. Excuse me. That is the truth. You travel to other states, it's not so much like that. But here in the in the great boot, that's how we roll. Now, I've got Austin Davis with us today. And Austin is our national director of training for Concealed Coalition. He holds too many certifications for me to even begin to describe. But I will say uh Austin first, welcome. Glad to have you here. Austin has been, I would say Austin is my mentor. I think we probably all have that person who, you know, in our industry, you look up to, you learn from. And Austin's been that person for me. So it's it's an honor to be able to work with him on a daily basis and have him on the show. So Austin, I'm gonna roll this over to you to introduce yourself. Welcome to Behind the Holster.
SPEAKER_00Hello, my Concealed Coalition Behind the Holster family. Jody, thanks for having me on. Very proud of that. Uh, police officer, been commissioned off and on since 1995. I have over 45 different instructor certificates uh that are relative to this discussion. And I have over 30 years of teaching law enforcement corporations and every type of group and individual how to prevent, manage, and recover from crime. And I love this topic. And it is something I get asked about all the time. And it's something I think about every time I'm in some sort of situation where I see someone running their mouth because Jack Daniels decided to do the talking for them. I keep thinking, if he's got a gun, this is not gonna go well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we have that a lot uh around here, especially uh Mardi Gras time seems to be seems to be the opportunity where everybody feels like they're 10 foot tall. You know, Mardi Gras, you know what Mardi Gras French for. It's pee in the street. P in the street. I don't I don't disagree with that.
SPEAKER_00I don't disagree with it. You don't believe me, just go there and look around and go, what is Mardi Gras? Apparently.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's funny, you know, I was on a on a plane coming back from training a class in Minnesota a few years ago, and it was during Mardi Girl. And when I got on the plane, the whole plane was dressed with people who were dressed up for Mardi Girl, and they looked at me. I was the only one who wasn't dressed to go. And this lady said, Are you are you from there? I said, Yeah, you know, I'm about 30 minutes north of there. And she's like, What should we do? We're we're going to Mardi Girl. What should we do? I was like, if I was you, I would probably just get off the plane and go home. And she didn't speak to me the rest of the flight, she didn't speak to me the rest of the flight, but that's okay. So as we get into alcohol and firearms, I think there's uh some unique things when it comes to alcohol and firearms, depending on in-home, out-of-home situate different types of situations. So if you would, could you give us a little insight on if I said Austin? I was in a self-defense shooting and I had a few beers. One beer. Let's gay one beer, crawfish and one beer.
SPEAKER_00How big is this beer we're talking about, though? Is this one of those little tiny beers, or is this like you know, something that's like you know named after a poisonous snake? Like, you know, black cobra, you know, 44 ounce.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I'm in New Orleans, so let's let's let's just go with uh let's just go get 12 ounce beer. Okay, I've had one beer, I'm in a self-defense shooting, you arrive on the scene, and I'm there trying to explain to you what happened. What's your perspective for law enforcement?
SPEAKER_00This is my perspective only, but I'm a police trainer by profession, so I I train a lot of baby cops to make adult cops. What you have to understand is what is a police officer? They're gatherer of facts. When they show up, they're trying to split this scene into four things right away, no matter what's going on. Where is my victim? Where's my suspect? Where's my witnesses? Where's my bystanders? And I'm trying to filter and keep them all apart. So when I show up and there's some sort of use of force, now we think of defensive gun use, but this could also be you punched him, you pepper sprayed him, you know, you hit him with your car, whatever. If I show up and you got glassy eyes and I smell alcoholic beverage on your breath, remember, I'm a gatherer of facts. This is probably going into my report. Now remember though, also how much that affects it downrange, I don't know in the process because I'm just at the start. I'm just a gather of facts, but it's something to think about. Also, when I go in there to the bar we were just at, I'm gonna say, hey, I need to see what credit card charges these people had. I need to see the video footage. So if you tell me you had a beverage and you had two beverages, you've already lied to me about something. And then I don't know. Do you have an ambient in you? Did you smoke a joint in the parking lot? So yeah, we have a beer. So it's a real problem. But let's let's just stick to alcohol for a second. Why do we drink? We drink because we want to take a vacation on our prefrontal cortex, and that is the thing that makes decision making, impulse control. And it's also the problem with shrinking that prefrontal cortex of alcohol, is it gives you an internal deception. And I'll give you my favorite line. I'm not that drunk. You ever heard that line? You ever said that line? No, I'm not that drunk. You say this as you look up as you're hugging the toilet bowl.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. That's that's the number one answer for I am drunk. That's the number one answer. Yeah, it's like it's it's like family feud, right? You hit number one when you ask, are you drunk? No, I'm not drunk. I'm not drunk. You're drunk.
SPEAKER_00With the modifier. So you kind of split the difference here. I'm not that drunk. Yeah, yeah. I'm not you think I'm this, but I'm not that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I've only had, and then you insert a number there. I've only had three beers, like you said. 10 ounce, 12 ounce, 16 ounce, 24 ounce, 32 ounce. You know, there's a difference. Three is three. I mean, you know.
SPEAKER_00And when you're drinking you always get the same answer: a couple, a couple kegs, a couple, a couple cases of Jack Daniels. I I yeah, what's a couple?
SPEAKER_01It sounds so good though, you know, to yourself. When you say it, it sounds I've only had a couple, it's not that big a deal.
SPEAKER_00And if you ever spend time around me, you know I always tell people that there's only three things that matter in a gunfight to win a gunfight, and that is skill decision making, solid procedural skills, and emotional control. So let's think about alcohol for a second. Is this means you're gonna be a better decision maker with alcohol in you? Probably not. Solid procedural skills, that means all your stuff is automatic. Are you gonna have a lot more fine motor controls? Actually, I hate to tell you all this, but there is a certain amount of alcohol which will improve your ability to hit a golf ball or in baseball. I don't know where that is.
SPEAKER_01I don't know where that is. My son was telling me the other day how good he is at cornhole, and I was like, that's the only game you can play. The more you drink, the better you get. My wife looked at me, she's like, Don't tell him that. I'm like, it's true. You have you have that right amount of drink, and all of a sudden you're a cornhole professional.
SPEAKER_00There is there's a fine line on that one. But the third part of that, though, was emotional control. Because if we go into dog brain, if we bypass this into amygdala hijack, if I can do neurological stuff, and alcohol accentuates all that. So some of the stuff that you would just write off and walk off because you got a couple of drinks in you, that may be different. Also, when we talk about drinking, I have a real problem with drinking around people. Sounds like I'm gonna go in my backyard and like toss a bottle off of top of a bottle off crown. We have a therapist on the next call. On the therapist. Please put me on that one. Please put me on that one. But the thing you need to understand is when when, you know, John Farn's rule, if you really want to stay safe in this world, it's it's called the don't go to stupid places with stupid people at stupid times and do stupid things. And the problem is sometimes when we're drinking, we're around stupid people. And what's really interesting is I drink very little. Five, six, seven times a year, maybe. I just very, very little. And when I do, I drink very moderate amounts. But what's interesting to me is as a police officer, when I'm at some sort of function and I smell alcohol in your breath, my wife says I get that sort of shark look in my eyes because so many of the people I make calls on over the years have alcohol in them. And these people are unpredictable. They have very little emotional control. So if you think about it, if you are a kind of person who wants to drink and you are a person thinks you need to have a defensive gun use, um, excuse me, a gun to protect you, there's some other problems too. And that is when you go drinking, I don't know about your state, but in my state, if you bring a gun into a bar, you've already got a problem.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And then that's that's state to state.
SPEAKER_00Even if it's a good shooting, you still had a firearm in the bar. And remember, we're always trying to fight three things. We're trying to fight the criminal prosecution, the civil prosecution, and the social pariah. You may get off criminally sibly, but you still can't, your kids can't go to school there. You can't live in your house anymore, you lose your job, your social standing in the community, your house of worship turns your back on you. There's some there's some downsides to using force. So a lot of people think, well, wish a fool would try. Let me tell you, you your conflict may be the easiest, least painful part of the whole process.
SPEAKER_01Right. You don't, you, you, you don't want to get into that, but it's interesting that you mentioned that because state to state, there are different laws as far as carrying in a bar room. Sorry. For you know, Texas, for instance, right? The 51% and places are supposed to have signage up that indicate if the majority of their 51% of their revenue comes from the sale of alcohol. Well, other states have very similar laws, however, they don't have the dedicated signage like the state of Texas does. So some of these states you can go into, and how am I supposed to know if they generate more than 51% of their uh revenue from alcohol? In some states, you can't have alcohol in your system at all and carry, while other states allow you to have a little bit of alcohol in your system and still carry a firearm. We'll get into that discussion inside of our membership, uh, our concealed coalition membership that we're gonna talk about. We're gonna go into detail on what those some of those states are and some of the other uh legalities as far as actually just being able to carry and be intoxicated. I did an episode on this a while back where we even talked about uh didn't really get into the alcohol that much, but even other stimulants that could affect the way that you operate, prescription medication, for instance, and carrying on prescription medication could operate a lot like what you described in what it does to your brain and to your body and to your motor skills while on what is a legal prescription medication.
SPEAKER_00What about this? You and I go drinking, we have two beers, we have crawfish, we're both fairly large human beings, but on the way home to your house or to my house, we get involved in some sort of road rage or some sort of carjacking scenario and there's a shooting. Remember, we have some problems here. One is the, okay, were we legally intoxicated at the time of that? The second thing is the civil case the family's gonna bring on you. And remember, civil case is not are you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? It's preponderance of the evidence. If it's a million-dollar judgment against you, were you one dollar or nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand or a million dollars in that? And that alcohol formula could also bite into that as well. So this becomes really complicated. And what do you do in those states where weed is legal?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01So that's a good one.
SPEAKER_00You now go, okay, I had two beers, but you know, I smoked a pile, a plastic garbage bag full of weed yesterday. So when you do a blood test, I I've got a high level of THC in my system plus the alcohol, this starts turning real complicated. Now, here's the point. Tell me if I'm wrong. We are not saying do not get intoxicated. We are not saying do not use um an intoxicating beverage or a substance that is legal and appropriate for you as a consenting adult. What we're saying is if you do this, it really is a good idea to sort of formulate a plan so that you sort of bubble wrap yourself so that you can, because the whole point of this is to relax, let your guard down your inhibitions. You and I have a couple of cognacs and we're swapping stories. We shouldn't have to be in hypervigilance. We shouldn't have to be in condition one awareness. So we're not saying don't do this. We're just saying don't do this and set yourself up for a problem downstream. And if I ever would you like free guns, Jody? Would you like free guns? I love them. Free guns for you. My favorite thing. Here's how we could get a bunch of free guns. We just have to go to some busy bar that we know people do not carry guns into and just sit in the corner and just watch a guy do this and then stick it underneath his front seat. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's a whole nother that's a whole nother issue.
SPEAKER_00You know uh uh trust me, uh, your car is not a gun safe. If the other separate thing, your car is not a gun safe. Matter of fact, I think the call that people call you, hey, Austin, hey Jody, I need to know a gun that's not real expensive, but it's reliable. I go, Well, you already have a good gun. Why is that? Because when I leave my gun in the car and they steal it, I don't want to lose a really great gun. It's like don't leave your gun in the car.
SPEAKER_01That's the sum of the confusion, which that's that's a great point, and a whole nother episode that we can go into. But the fact is that if you carry a gun on your person daily, you are going to go to places in which legally you are not allowed to carry your firearm inside or on that property. I understand that. And so the only place to leave your firearm is in your vehicle. But there are but a glove box and a middle console and under your seat. Yeah, those those are those are not safes. And what baffles me, for 30 bucks, you can go get, if that's what you can afford for $30, you can go get one of the metal safes that open with a key or a small combination with that come with the steel cables, and you can put that steel cable underneath your seat somewhere where it's you know hooked to the frame of your vehicle. And that way, if they come in, they're pulling the safe, they got to come with bolt cutters, which from what I've seen on all the ring cameras that are out now and car break-ins, it's a snatch and grab. They're they're there to be in and out. They're not carrying bolt cutters, and they're not gonna sit there and yank on that safe for 30 minutes trying to get it loose. So it's a preventative measure that costs you $30 that actually protects the tool that you're gonna use to save your life or your family's life. But a $30 investment can save up anywhere upwards from $500 to $1,000 firearm.
SPEAKER_00And it's very simple and we're looking for our free gun at the cost of carrying a brick to get in, and you see me open my trunk or the back of my SUV, open my gun drawer, put the gun there and lock it down. You know there's a gun in there. Okay, fine, fair. But you're just looking for the guy who went, I don't I don't need to go to that guy who I saw put it in a box. That's that's quick, easy, and low risk, low possibility resistance. Just it's not in the formula. No.
SPEAKER_01This is great information. We're gonna cut this off here. We're gonna go into more discussion on this more detail with state regulations. Uh, what happens if you are in a defensive shooting and you're at home and maybe you're having a drink, maybe you're in public. We're gonna go into that and get Austin's perspective from law enforcement, talk about some of the legal side of it. Click the link below, check out our YouTube uh membership. I think we got it starting at $2.99 a month for this information. And you get to comment on there, you get to leave us suggestions. You have something you want us to do with the show on, leave that in the comments. We will do the research and we will get back to you and produce a show on that. So, Austin, I appreciate you coming on today. We're going to end this episode and jump into the next one. So, remember, guys, Kangaroo Carry holster is the best holster you'll never see at Kangaroo Carry.com. They are our sponsor today. Also, with Concealed, we always say, be a guardian always.
SPEAKER_00And a warrior when needed.
