The tale of a 65-year-old engineer,
flying home to Alabama through LaGuardia Airport, and then dragged
off in handcuffs after following all of the Transportation
Security Administration’s extensive rules for getting his .22
pistol from Point A to Point B, features in an Associated Press
story.
As it turns out, Mike Connolly was arrested simply because he
owned a firearm and was within the grasp of New York City
authorities. City officials used the opportunity to mug him and
steal his gun.
From
Jake Pearson at Associated Press:
Mike Connolly thought he was doing everything by the book after
a vacation last fall when he packed his handgun for the flight home
from New York’s LaGuardia Airport.Following Transportation Security Administration guidelines, the
65-year-old Alabama engineer locked his unloaded Ruger .22 in a
hard-sided container, put it in a checked bag, handed it to the
ticket agent and told the agent the weapon was inside.That’s when he was slapped with handcuffs, arrested on a felony
weapons possession charge and hauled off to jail.
Such incidents—travelers passing through New York City with
locked, unloaded firearms and being arrested just
because—are sufficiently common that at least one Queens
Attorney maintains a page on his website devoted to his expertise
in such matters. According to
Martin Kane:
If you have been arrested for possession of a firearm or other
weapon at JFK or LaGuardia airports in Queens County, NY, you
probably share several traits with almost all of my airport gun
arrest clients:1) You are a law-abiding citizen who is careful to follow the
law.2) You recognize the responsibilities of gun ownership and are
careful to handle, store, and transport your handgun in the safest
way possible.3) When you flew to New York, you carefully checked with both
your airline and the TSA as to whether it was legal to transport
your firearm in your luggage. You also learned and followed the
strict requirements such as unloading and segregating ammunition,
using a TSA approved lockbox, and submitting a TSA Declaration
form.
The Associated Press agrees, saying of the 25 travelers arrested
at New York City airports last year, “They were hardly nefarious
gun runners. Most were otherwise law-abiding gun-owners who
mistakenly thought they had appropriately packed their heat for
travel.”
For their troubles, if they don’t fight, the “offenders” get
their charges reduced to non-criminal violations with hundreds of
dollars in fines—and city officials steal their guns. That’s in
addition to the time the travelers spent in jail for trying to do
things by the rules.
If they fight, they face felony charges.
Why has New York City become such a trap for gun owners who are
trying to follow the rules to get out of the place? Writes Kane,
“The short answer is that New York has the toughest gun control
laws in the world and does not recognize the legitimacy of any out
of state licenses as conveying any rights in New York. To make
matters worse, our current mayor has made gun law enforcement a
signature issue and accordingly, the Queens District Attorney has
set up a separate bureau headed by a high ranking official just for
gun cases.”
Queens Executive District Attorney Robert J. Masters,
who sounds like quite the jerk, puts the blame on the arrestees.
“There is, frankly, an element of irresponsibility. They’ve
traveled. They realize that licenses are different around the
country.”
Remember, these travelers were trying to get out of New
York City, so there’s no pretense of keeping residents safe from
(**gasp**) unloaded, locked guns. So licenses may be “different,”
but this is just a game of gotcha.
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