Basically, the federal Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit has gutted the federal interstate transport law by ruling that individual officers can't be sued for arresting you EVEN WHEN you are complying with the FOPA interstate transport requirements. The court said that FOPA only lets you beat a criminal conviction, not the arrest. So you still get the ride EVEN THOUGH prosecutors know you will beat the rap.
The judges decided that there was "no way" that Congress intended individual officers to be liable for knowing whether a person traveling under FOPA was legally entitled to possess the firearms in the beginning and destination states.
The 2d Circuit's opinion disposed of three different lawsuits by travelers who were either arrested or delayed(harassed) while traveling through NYC-area airports within NY state.
This means that two different circuits have attacked FOPA and severely restricted its application (the other being the 3rd circuit, which held that unexpected flight cancellations leave you open to arrest/conviction if the state in which you wind up stranded prohibits your gun). That 3rd Circuit case stemmed from two NJ arrests.
Prof. Volokh has more info and a link to the 2d circuit opinion:
http://volokh.com/2010/07/02/the-li...etting-you-travel-with-a-locked-unloaded-gun/
The judges decided that there was "no way" that Congress intended individual officers to be liable for knowing whether a person traveling under FOPA was legally entitled to possess the firearms in the beginning and destination states.
The 2d Circuit's opinion disposed of three different lawsuits by travelers who were either arrested or delayed(harassed) while traveling through NYC-area airports within NY state.
This means that two different circuits have attacked FOPA and severely restricted its application (the other being the 3rd circuit, which held that unexpected flight cancellations leave you open to arrest/conviction if the state in which you wind up stranded prohibits your gun). That 3rd Circuit case stemmed from two NJ arrests.
Prof. Volokh has more info and a link to the 2d circuit opinion:
http://volokh.com/2010/07/02/the-li...etting-you-travel-with-a-locked-unloaded-gun/
(...)So police officers seem to have nearly unlimited authority to arrest and otherwise interfere with people who are exercising their § 926A rights, with no threat of damages liability or anything else deterring such arrests or interference. And while I’m sure that most police officers want to follow the law, and don’t want to arrest people who are behaving legally, even well-intentioned officers might well know little about § 926A in the first place and even less about the other state laws that they’d have to apply in order to figure out whether the person is indeed transporting the gun legally. Now perhaps this is a necessary evil, given the police officers’ duty to enforce their state law, and the difficulty of knowing all the other states’ laws. But it is a reminder of how one’s rights on paper might not readily translate into rights in practice, even in the absence of any ill intentions on the part of the police.(...)