By Ian Tuttle
Friday, August 07, 2015
Elizabeth Elderli is not your typical felon. The 31-year-old
Houstonian is a wife, a stay-at-home mom, an honorably discharged Iraq War
veteran (U.S. Marine Corps) — and now the latest tourist to run afoul of New
York State’s unforgiving gun laws.
Elderli is the legal owner of a 9-mm and a .380-caliber handgun,
both of which she was carrying, loaded, as she queued in the security line at
the September 11 Memorial in lower Manhattan last Saturday. Noticing a sign
prohibiting firearms, she announced her two weapons to security personnel. She
was arrested by the NYPD, and the next day arraigned for felony possession of a
weapon. She now faces three-and-a-half to 15 years in prison.
The reason? Gun license reciprocity. Concealed-carry
permits issued by the state of Texas are recognized in the overwhelming majority
of other states — but not in New York, which has some of the strictest gun laws
in the country. As soon as Elderli crossed the border into New York, she was in
violation of Empire State penal law.
Elderli’s attorney, Amy Bellantoni — the Bellantoni Law
Firm handles a number of Second Amendment–related cases — says her client’s
action never needed to proceed even this far. “There was absolutely no criminal
intent whatsoever,” she says. Elderli simply misunderstood New York’s
reciprocity laws. “It was within the police officer’s discretion to arrest her.
It was within the district attorney’s discretion to charge her.” Now, if the
case goes to trial and Elderli is convicted, she’ll face a three-and-a-half
year mandatory-minimum sentence.
“There’s a gap here,” says Bellantoni, “where good
people, honest people, law-abiding citizens, are being made criminals. They are
being given criminal histories. Irrespective of how this case is resolved, my
client will always have a felony arrest on her criminal history.”
And it is the result of senseless gun laws. “The same
federal background check required to obtain a firearm license in New York State
is also required to obtain a firearm license in Texas,” Bellantoni observes,
“so there’s really no rational basis for the states not to recognize firearm
licenses from other states where the same federal background check was passed.”
Reciprocal recognition from New York State would still allow it to regulate
firearm licensing for its own residents, she notes; it would simply treat gun
owners who visit from other states more sensibly.
Such an arrangement is, alas, unlikely. In January, the
New York State legislature passed the Secure Ammunition and Firearms
Enforcement Act, toughening its already restrictive laws by expanding
background checks, prohibiting magazines with more than ten rounds, and
requiring the registration of all “assault weapons,” the definition of which
the act broadened. New York City, where Elderli was arrested, imposes licensing
requirements above and beyond the state’s.
New York State has the right (within constitutional
reason) to make its own gun laws, and the ever-widening grip of the federal
government means conservatives may find it wise, as a matter of principle, to
support that right — even when the results are onerous. But the motivations of
at least some gun-rights opponents cannot be ignored. Discussing Elizabeth
Elderli’s case with Fox News, Ladd Everitt, communications director for the
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, sneered: “We should also contemplate how
paranoid someone has to be to think they need two handguns to visit a place of
peaceful reflection in the tenth-safest major city in the world.” Charges of
paranoia seem to more accurately reflect Mr. Everitt’s motives than Elizabeth
Elderli’s.
Elderli, for her part, is back home, released on her own recognizance,
and scheduled to return to court in New York on August 28. Bellantoni is
hopeful: “I have full faith in the district attorney’s office that it will take
into consideration her intentions — the fact that she had no criminal intention
whatsoever — her background, her service to this country.”
But prosecutorial wisdom is a thin reed, and more than a
few accidental lawbreakers are not fortunate enough to receive it. A much
better remedy would be to revise the inane law that treats Texan tourists as
terrorists.
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