Texas-Book-Gun Law Armed And Educated - Flipbook - Page 376
lose their protection under the Safe Passage provision. How long
this time limit is has not been determined either statutorily or by
case law with any definitiveness.
While stopping for gas or restroom breaks may not disqualify a
person from the traveling protection, any stop for an activity not
directly related to traveling could be considered a destination, and
thus you would lose the legal protection. For example, in Chicago,
anyone in the city for more than 24 hours is not considered to be
traveling under local policy. In an actual case, stopping for a brief
nap in a bank parking lot in New Jersey caused a Texan driving back
home from Maine to lose the traveling protection. See Reininger v.
Attorney General of New Jersey, No. 14—5486—BRM, 2018 WL
3617962 (D.N.J. July 30, 2018). He received five years in prison
for possession of weapons that are illegal under New Jersey law. Of
course, if the driver would have made it to Allentown, Pennsylvania,
he would have been safe. The moral of the story is to travel through
these gun-unfriendly states as fast as you can—without breaking
the speed limit, of course!
D. Protection under federal law does not mean protection from
prosecution in gun-unfriendly states
To make matters even worse for firearms travelers, even if a person
qualifies for protection under the federal Safe Passage provision,
New Jersey and New York seem quite proud to treat this protection
as an affirmative defense. This means that someone can be arrested
even though he or she met all of the requirements of the federal
statute. Then, they would have to go to court to assert this defense.
In other words, while a person could beat the rap, they will not
beat the ride! This becomes even more troublesome in the instance
Law Of Handgun Carry: Part III 365
