You may recall the case of Shaneen Allen, a woman from Pennsylvania who was stopped for a lane-change violation in New Jersey — only to end up facing 10 years in prison, all because she told the police at the scene about the pistol she carried in her purse and showed them her Pennsylvania carry license. Allen was on her way to a kid’s birthday party in New Jersey. A mother of two, she’d been robbed twice in the past before determining that getting herself a firearm and learning how to use it was probably a smart idea. Like more than a dozen other states, New Jersey doesn’t recognize other states’ concealed carry laws, even for people just passing through. Atlantic County, N.J., prosecutor Jim McClain — “the same prosecutor who let Ray Rice off with pretrial diversion” — allowed the case to build toward a trial and had remained adamant that Allen would face a count of illegal possession of a firearm and another count for possession of illegal ammunition. Helped along by some public shaming, he finally reversed himself last September, allowing Allen to instead enter into a pretrial diversion program.
Fast-forward to now: A Senate Republican has introduced a reciprocity bill that would impose on every state a legal obligation to recognize the concealed carry permits of travelers hailing from any other state where they obtained their concealed carry permits.The so-called Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (CCCRA), according to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the bill’s sponsor, is intended specifically to “eliminate some of the ‘gotcha moments,’ where people inadvertently cross state lines” without realizing that doing so can automatically make them a potential criminal. “This operates more or less like a driver’s license,” Cornyn told The Hill. “So, for example, if you have a driver’s license in Texas, you can drive in New York, in Utah and other places, subject to the laws of those states.” Cornyn sponsored a similar bill in 2013, and it fell only three votes short of passing the then-Democratic-controlled Senate.