brickeyee said:
He was no longer "in transit through New Jersey" when his flight was canceled (missed) and he retrieved the gun from the airline.
His trip stopped being continuous from legal startng location to legal ending location.
Yep, it sucks, but that the law does not have an exception.
We're going to have to agree to disagree, until the courts have a definitive case on this question. The law does not have an exception, but the law also does not say that your trip ends if you need to sleep. Suppose you set out to drive from Seattle to Miami. According to Mapquest, that's 3309 miles and requires 49 hours and 48 minutes of actual driving time. In round numbers, a week. Your view would be that, if you break the trip down into 10-hour days, you're making five separate "trips." By that logic, then, you would also have to ensure that you are not only legal in Seattle and in Miami, but also in each of the states and cities where you stop for the night.
I just don't think that's consistent with the legislative intent of the law. If you set out on a trip like that, you tell people you're going on "a" road trip to Miami. You don't tell people you're going on a succession of five consecutive road trips. It's ONE trip, with five legs.
I understand your point, but the ONLY reason the gentleman stayed a night in New Jersey was that his connection got messed up. He had no "destination" in New Jersey, he had no reason to be there other than to travel through there, and he never even left the airport -- he slept in an airport hotel. That sort of activity is commonplace in traveling. Why else do you suppose the prosecutor dropped the case? If your view is correct, the prosecutor had a slam dunk ... but he declined to prosecute. I don't think it was because he's such a great guy.
And this is why I repeat that the FOPA is flawed. It was
intended to make it possible for people to engage in interstate travel without having to worry about the laws on intervening states. BUT ... the dweebs who wrote the law forgot that people travel from one state to another by means other than automobile -- such as airplanes and trains. Buses, too, but if you leave your gun in your suitcase and the suitcase goes into the cargo area under the floor, technically you comply with the requirement.
Unless your view is correct ... in which case nobody can take a trip to anywhere that requires more than one day of travel time.