Shaneen Allen, the
mother of two Philadelphia resident who purchased a firearm
after being the victim of multiple crimes, is now facing not three
but
11.5 years in prison after admitting to police she had the gun
in her car when she was stopped while driving in New Jersey. New
Jersey is one of
several states with strict gun laws and no reciprocity with
out-of-state licensing regimes.
A judge refused to place her in a diversion program that would
avoid jail time. In fact,
it was the same judge, and prosecutor, that decided Baltimore
Ravens running back Ray Rice could enter a diversionary program
instead of facing prosecution and possible jail time after getting
caught on camera allegedly knocking his then-fiancé
unconscious.
Columnists in New Jersey who even bother to cover this
horrifying case either make excuses—”this is how the system works”
wrote the editorial board of The Press of Atlantic
City, arguing only that the three year mandatory-minimum
is unjust—or cheering New Jersey’s effort to combat illegal guns by
trying to throw a single mother with a legal gun in jail for years.
“Common sense is not transporting a concealed handgun loaded with
outlawed bullets in a state that prohibits same,” Bryan Miller
writes dismissively
at The Courier-Post. The law’s the law, he argue, and
it was democratically-passed and supported. Ignorance is no excuse.
Neither, apparently, is the Constitution. Exercising your
constitutionally-guaranteed right,
worse than beating your wife.
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