Traveling with firearms can be fraught with pitfalls, especially when traveling through extremely anti-gun states. In order to travel a lot without running afoul of various restrictive state laws, a gun owner has to do his or her homework and know all the laws before ever leaving home.
Unfortunately, Green Bay Packers offensive lineman Rasheed Walker didn’t do his homework. So, when he declared a handgun in his checked luggage at LaGuardia Airport, like he probably has at airports around the country, he was promptly arrested due to New York’s extreme anti-gun laws.
Walker’s gun was locked in a gun box inside his checked baggage, which would have been legal in most other states. His attorney told the New York Post that Walker simply did not realize he could not travel with the gun in New York.
According to the pro-gun group Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), Walker’s unjust arrest is just another example of how bad gun laws can entrap well-meaning gun owners.
“Once again, New York’s irrational gun control restrictions are creating legal nightmares for a U.S. citizen who obeyed the law by reporting the firearm in his luggage,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said in a news release on the matter. “Virtually anywhere else in the country, Mr. Walker could legally travel with his firearm by declaring it at check-in, but in New York, they treat traveling gun owners like criminals thanks to a statute which should have been nullified decades ago by the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986.”
Gottlieb said New York lawmakers and law enforcement need a crash course on the Second Amendment.
“And when they discuss gun control at the Legislature in Albany, there should be at least one adult in the room who understands what the Supreme Court was telling them with the 2022 ruling in the Bruen case,” he said.
In characterizing New York lawmakers, Gottlieb said they refuse to fix their broken gun laws because they are “spoiled.”
“New York legislators have continued to react like spoiled children by not correcting the state’s notoriously regressive and restrictive gun control laws, so that citizens such as Mr. Walker would no longer have to put up with this tyrannical nonsense,” Gottlieb concluded. “The charge should never have been brought in the first place, and Walker should never have been arrested because the law is an abomination.”
Walker is expected to appear in court on the charges on March 19.
Ultimately, it’s a travesty that New York continues to ensnare lawful citizens with its draconian gun control laws. But given the state’s political climate, it’s unlikely the legislature will do anything to fix the problem anytime soon.
Hopefully, prosecutors will drop the charges against Walker, and he can move on with his life. After this bad experience, he’ll likely be more careful where he travels with a firearm in the future.