Posted on 07/16/2014 10:24:31 AM PDT by marktwain
Meet the honest 27 year old single mom from PA who faces 3 years in a New Jersey prison
Shaneen Allen is no dangerous criminal. She's a single mom working 2 jobs who's already been robbed twice while traveling alone at night in Philadelphia. Her family suggested that she carry a gun for protection. She took a gun safety course, applied for and was granted a concealed carry permit, and bought a gun.
Then she made the mistake of driving into New Jersey.
Allen said that she didn't know her permit didn't apply to New Jersey so when she was stopped for a minor traffic offense she told the police about her gun and her permit to carry. In this case, being honest may have cost her.
"The judge tried to tell me that telling the truth messed me up, my life up and the cop said the same thing. Me opening my mouth and speaking out he said I'm one out of ten people that spoke up and was honest and that got me in trouble," she said.
Allen was charged with unlawful possession of a weapon and possession of hallow-point bullets which were in the gun. Under New Jersey gun laws, the illegal possession of a gun is a second-degree felony which holds a minimum sentence of three-years in prison.
I hope all you moms demanding "gun sense" are happy. Because your draconian gun laws are working. They're taking dangerous criminals like Shaneen Allen off the streets, and leaving her kids to fend for themselves.
Oh, but wait, elsewhere in New Jersey today…
Atlantic City: Shortly before noon a man was shot in the back at the corner of Connecticut and Drexel Avenues.
Camden: 2 people were shot this morning at the Regency House Apartment complex.
Winslow Township: A teen is recovering after a stray bullet hit her through a bedroom wall.
Paterson: A 19 year old man was arrested in the shooting death of 12 year old Genesis Rincon, who was killed while riding her scooter.
Newark: The homicide toll now stands at 44 after Edison Javier Vasquez Naranjo, 27, was found shot outside a home on the 200 block of 4th Street near the city's Branch Brook Park.
Putting a 27 year old single mom in prison surely would have prevented all that, right?
Of course not. Only an idiot, or a member of Moms Demand Action (but I repeat myself), could think otherwise.
All the feel-good legislation in the world wouldn't have stopped today's (or any other) shootings. And locking up Shaneen Allen is a travesty. She'll rot in jail just so preening soccer moms can pat themselves on the back.
Because that's what our state calls "justice" these days.
bump
>>>I don’t want to see this woman go to jail, but she should have checked NJ laws before traveling into the state. Responsible gun owners do not make assumptions about the law.<<<
I would rephrase that to say, “Shrewd gun owners, who want to avoid being thrown into a fascist prison, for exercising their 2nd Amendment rights, do not make assumptions about the law.”
Being ignorant of, or disobeying absurd, unconstitutional gun laws in fascist states is unwise, but does not one “irresponsible”, as she put nobody in danger.
Take your pick:
I'm not holding my breath.
Agreed on all accounts, but NJ gun laws are so purposely vague. While they are supposed to honor Federal laws in regards to Interstate Transport (which she technically did not follow here), that if NJ police find you have a firearm even following those Federal rules will simply arrest you on the spot and let the judge decide whether you are guilty or not.
Um...
Perhaps stating the obvious, but this is too specific. Yes, there are good cops.
However, ANY public official, in regards to your private rights and private property, are potentially the enemy.
I’m not going to outline all the concerns, but not consenting to searches and not volunteering information that could be used against you are 2 biggies...
I don’t even care if a person knows the cop/official personally.
This could also be extended to liberal/RAT/Prog neighbors/family/’friends’...
Prayers for this mom and soon release.
I meant responsible in the sense of executing legal obligations. She had a legal obligation to know the law.
How about a compromise? “Shrewd and responsible gun owners ...”
Amen. It even applies to teachers. I have drilled it into my kids’ brains since they started school. DO NOT answer questions in the principal’s office (or elsewhere) about trouble without my presence, especially if a police officer is present or is asking the questions. They know to say, “Call my parents. I’m not answering any questions without Mom or Dad.” They’ve been tested a time or two on it by administrators and did exactly what they were supposed to do.
Uh, I hope you know that the law on that has changed. Failure to present is no longer an offense, and it is not listed as grounds for either revocation or suspension of the license. The law was changed in 2009, and it took away the ability to seize the CHL for failure to present.
Be aware that is a personal posting and not the wording of the current law.
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/GV/htm/GV.411.htm#411.205
While I was never stopped by the NJ government, I made a wrong turn and ended up going across the bridge into NJ. Very frightening. Made an immediate turnaround to get back to PA.
TEXAS CONCEALED HANDGUN LICENSE LAWS AND SELECTED STATUTES
2013 - 2014
https://www.txdps.state.tx.us/internetforms/Forms/CHL-16.pdf
Page 30
GC §411.205. REQUIREMENT TO DISPLAY LICENSE. If a license holder is carrying a handgun on or about the license holder’s person when a magistrate or a peace officer demands that the license holder display identification, the license holder shall display both the license holder’s driver’s license or identification certificate issued by the department and the license holder’s handgun license.
This should fall under prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutor should refuse to prosecute, the young lady should then be given her gun and ammo back and then she should receive a state trooper escort back to the border.
When we get the presidency back, I’d like to see the fed government start requiring states track how many people are convicted ONLY for gun control offenses. Cases like this lady. They could do this by attaching it to any one of the many govt dollar hand outs they give to the police departments.
That would start making the case that gun control laws do nothing but make criminals out of honest people.
I hear what you are saying. I just don’t like using anti-gun sinkhole standards for terms like “responsible gun owner”, and I am a sinkhole resident.
Ever since the so-called War On Drugs (WOD) and, now, the War On Terror (WOT) — actually more like the War On The Bill of Rights) — began, our civilian cops have been undergoing MILITARY training. The “authorities” gentle it down with the prefix “Para” but those “dynamic entry” teams would be more at home in Baghdad than Boston. (Well, unless they hit John Kerry’s front door at 3 am, Boston might not be a good example.) Watch “Dallas SWAT” for a dose of how it works.
I have long thought that that sort of activity within the ranks of otherwise “civilian” law enforcement was a push by those with an agenda to bypass posse comitatus for purposes BEYOND the WOD/WOT and other currently criminal behavior.
That the mass of that shrinking minority – the American citizen (thank you Mr. Open Borders Bush and Total Amnesty Obama) – has NOT objected to this erosion of personal liberty does NOT bode well for the future of freedom here.
I wonder what sort of body count of innocent grandmothers and others it will take before folks begin to grasp that they might be more at risk from the cops than the criminals and bring the situation back under control?
My Uncle Bob (R.I.P.) would be horrified.
My Uncle Bob was a 30-year veteran of a police force in suburban Cleveland. He was best man at my wedding in 1962. He served in an era when MOST cops embodied the now frequently hollow motto emblazoned on police units all over this country: “TO PROTECT AND SERVE.”
The last 10 years of his career were spent as the chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he had touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens (see Warren v. DC for some fascinating and frightening reading on that), would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
Having said that, I must also lament that SOME cops are “cowboys.” Too many are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take. It is these clowns who give credence to the wry bit of “humor” that there is no situation than cannot be made worse by the presence of the cops.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. (See footnote below). Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! — spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear to anyone with half a brain criminality of the Clintons and now Obama – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem? There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my uncle would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” — referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
Dick Bachert (1999) Updated 12/2010
FOOTNOTE:
At a cocktail party back in the late 80’s, I struck up a conversation with a fellow — his name was Joe M. — whom I’d met on one or two previous events. After my first encounter, Joe’s neighbor and my boss at the time told me that Joe was an alcoholic who had just retired from 25 years with the IRS. Needless to say, I was guarded in expressing my political views to Joe as the IRS had helped my dad into an early grave in 1977 — at age 59 over an estate matter. Joe was pretty deep into his cups at the function in question and began telling IRS “war stories.” Most had to do with clear cases of criminal conduct by not very nice people. Joe — who was a few years short of 60 — sounded to me like someone who enjoyed helping getting really bad people off the street and I asked why he’d retired early. He told me that what he called “the service” had changed for the worse. Then I asked him about the new people coming in. He shook his head, actually teared up and said that many of them were “really bad.” I pressed. “Really bad” meant incompetent? “No — DANGEROUS,” he responded “they like to hurt people.”
It was then that I think I understood why Joe drank.
HB2730 struck the following from 411.205 in 2009:
Sec. 411.205. REQUIREMENT TO DISPLAY [DISPLAYING] LICENSE[; PENALTY] [(a)] If a license holder is carrying a handgun on or about the license holder's person when a magistrate or a peace officer demands that the license holder display identification, the license holder shall display both the license holder's driver's license or identification certificate issued by the department and the license holder's handgun license. [A person who fails or refuses to display the license and identification as required by this subsection is subject to suspension of the person's license as provided by Section 411.187. [(b) A person commits an offense if the person fails or refuses to display the license and identification as required by Subsection (a) after previously having had the person's license suspended for a violation of that subsection. An offense under this subsection is a Class B misdemeanor.]
HB2730 also said:
SECTION 12A.03. An offense under Section 411.205, Government Code, may not be prosecuted after the effective date of this article. If, on the effective date of this article, a criminal action is pending for an offense under Section 411.205, the action is dismissed on that date. However, a final conviction for an offense under Section 411.205 that exists on the effective date of this article is unaffected by this article.
SECTION 12A.04. This article takes effect September 1, 2009.
So we can't be prosecuted under 411.205 and we can't be revoked.
Just read my tagline. Krispy Kreme will not be a friend to this Mom.
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