One bill has stood above the rest for decades as NRA-ILA’s top federal priority, and the New York City Metro area has once again shown why. National reciprocity legislation, which recognizes the rights of citizens as they lawfully travel interstate with firearms, cannot come fast enough.
Unfortunately, it won’t come fast enough for Green Bay Packers football player Rasheed Walker, who was arrested last week at LaGuardia Airport. Walker reasonably thought he was following proper protocol by declaring his unloaded, locked, and secured handgun in his checked baggage at the Delta Airlines ticket counter at check-in. Indeed, this is the proper and recognized protocol virtually everywhere else in America. Unfortunately, this particular Delta ticket counter was located in New York, one of the few remaining states that refuse to recognize Second Amendment rights of travelers.
The confusing gauntlet that remains for lawful gun owners in parts of the United States is often referred to as draconian, but it is worse than that. It is a traumatizing, criminalizing, and expensive legal nightmare for innocent Americans that has been tolerated by federal officials for far too long. Mr. Walker did not have a New York carry permit as he walked to the Delta ticket counter last week. He simply could not have. That permit does not exist for Mr. Walker as a Wisconsin citizen, where he is a lawful and licensed firearm owner. Walker was arrested and charged with second degree criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a firearm, both felonies in the state of New York. He now awaits a court appearance in mid-March.
Mr. Walker’s story is not an unfamiliar one, as NRA has been reporting for many years on the ills of New York and other states that refuse to respect the legal rights of travelers exercising their right to arms. Shaheen Allen, for example, faced a similar predicament in New Jersey. Ms. Allen, a single mom from Philadelphia who possessed a Pennsylvania concealed carry permit, traveled just miles away to the Atlantic City area. During a traffic stop, she dutifully informed the police officer she had her pistol in the car. She was then arrested and ultimately convicted of a felony, as the state of New Jersey does not recognize lawful firearm carry permits from neighboring Pennsylvania. It ultimately took a governor’s pardon to save her from what could have been a 42-month prison sentence.
Especially given the U.S. Supreme Court’s clear pronouncements on the Second Amendment, stories of citizens falling afoul of the daunting patchwork of laws designed to ensnare law-abiding firearm owners should not continue to make headlines.
Americans fly through the skies every day with properly declared and checked firearms throughout most of the country. A federal law, the Firearms Owners Protection Act (FOPA), supports the ability of citizens to travel interstate with firearms. Yet various jurisdictions – none more notorious than the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – ignore the letter and spirit of this law, to say nothing of the Second Amendment, to harass travelers who pose no public safety risks whatsoever.
NRA-ILA has long been warning of the pitfalls for travelers with firearms traversing New York, as well at anti-gun locals in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. Prosecutors will often pursue local charges in these states, FOPA notwithstanding, and tell the travelers they’re terrorizing and who invoke that law to “tell it to the judge.” Many have no choice but to accept the confiscation of their lawful property and a plea to criminal charges to avoid lengthy, out-of-state legal proceedings they cannot afford to navigate.
Meanwhile, far from public safety menaces, permit holders are far more law abiding than the general population, subjecting themselves to a litany of local, state, and federal laws to exercise their constitutional rights. Imagine a scenario of properly following the law and airline protocols as you travel from gun-friendly Montana to gun-friendly New Hampshire. Then, through no fault of your own, the flight is diverted to LaGuardia airport because of bad weather, and you now have to reclaim your luggage with your properly checked firearm packed inside. In doing so, you are now considered by local officialdom to be in illegal possession of a firearm without a license. If you think they would consider the big picture and give you a break, think again.
The right to carry firearms has certainly come a long way both via state legislatures and court cases after over forty years of steadfast work by the National Rifle Association. Today, all fifty states now have some form of concealed carry available to their citizens. Twenty-nine states have permitless carry. The landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen concluded that the word “bear” “naturally encompasses public carry” and as such “a right to ‘bear’ arms in public for self-defense.” Ultimately, both the Second and Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution protect the right to have firearms outside of the home. All of which makes the unconstitutional stubbornness of some cities and states even more unacceptable.
With President Trump indicating that he will sign federal reciprocity legislation into law that will put an end to these legal nightmares for traveling firearm owners, there is simply no valid reason for the latest effort, H.R. 38, the Constitutional Carry Reciprocity Act, to sit idle in Congress.
For Rasheed Walker and others in his unfortunate position, the stakes are all too real.
For other gun owners whose travel plans may take them through the New York City Metro area, the Trump Administration’s recent moves to legalize the mailing of handguns through the U.S. Postal Service may eventually provide a safer workaround.
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