Hundreds of gun-toting tourists have been arrested at NYC airports
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The TSA advises travelers to check the local gun laws in the jurisdictions they visit before attempting to carry a firearm in their luggage. AP Photo by Mark Lennihan.
By Claire Bryan
Special to the Eagle
Marcus and Shekeidra Booker’s trip to New York City last August went according to plan, until the final leg back to Georgia when Booker checked his handgun. Marcus Booker had packaged the weapon in a hard-cased container just as Transportation Security Administration recommends, but the Port Authority Police arrested him as he stood at the check-in desk. He had broken New York State law, they said.
Though Booker is licensed to legally own his handgun in Georgia, a state known for its gun-friendly policies, his Georgia license doesn’t stand up to New York State’s strict gun laws. “We were going to a big city,” Booker said. “I wanted to keep my wife safe.”
Booker overlooked a TSA guideline that advises travelers to comply with firearm laws wherever they travel. Policies vary across local, state and international governments, TSA warns on its website. According to the Bookers, no one checking in their gun at the Atlanta airport warned them they would be at risk of getting arrested in New York City.
“We’ve flown to Las Vegas, and other places, this has never happened,” Marcus Booker said.
“No one said nothing,” Shekeidra Booker said. “I think the airport has a responsibility to tell him he could get arrested.”
Marcus Booker is among 483 people who have been arrested for possessing a firearm at JFK and LaGuardia airports since 2014, according to the Queens District Attorney’s Office. The numbers of these airport arrests have remained fairly consistent each year, ranging from 69 in 2014 to 92 in 2015 arrests each year, according to the Queens DA’s Office data. There were 67 such arrests last year.
Many defendants, like Booker, were unaware they were breaking the law when they brought their guns to New York City, said Queens District Attorney’s Supreme Court Trial Bureau I Chief Francesco Catarisano.
“Most of the seizures at the airport are made as a result of the person saying, ‘I'm here I have a gun that I have to transport,’” Catarisano said. “In a sense they are surrendering. Though they’re not really surrendering because they want [the gun] back, but they recognize that they have the gun and they are giving up custody of it.”
Not doing their research
Penalties for gun possession can include a $1,000 fine and a four-year prison sentence — up to 15 years if the gun is loaded with ammunition. But the offense can also result in an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal — a full dismissal of the charges as long as the individual doesn’t get arrested again in a set period of time, said defense attorney Jeremy Saland, a former Manhattan prosecutor. Saland, who is also a councilmember in New Castle, NY, said he represents about six clients charged with airport-related firearm arrests each year.
“Routinely, these individuals are law-abiding citizens genuinely attempting to follow the law and adhere to TSA guidelines,” Saland said.
Queens prosecutors tend to treat defendants with out-of-state licenses with leniency, Saland said.
Of the cases at JFK and LaGuardia airports since 2014, 80 percent have resulted in a dismissal or a plea to disorderly conduct, according to the Queens DA’s Office data. Sentences included a fine or a conditional discharge. Four cases resulted in state prison time, and all of those cases were because the individual didn’t declare their weapon and had other aggravating factors, said Catarisano the Queens assistant district attorney.
“The fact remains that in the state of New York, all of these situations are felonies,” Catarisano said. “But we try to make the difference with the disposition of it, in treating them differently than somebody who is actually using the gun in a robbery, or in the commission of another crime.”
While TSA checkpoints do fall under federal jurisdiction, and some police officers at airports are authorized to enforce TSA requirements that prohibit flying with a gun in a carry-on bag at security, arrests that happen at the airline desk when the traveler is speaking with the airline representatives fall are under state jurisdiction.
Atlanta Airport’s TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein said every traveler who is carrying a firearm should do their homework to ensure they are complying with the laws of the jurisdiction they are flying to and from. Airlines like Delta also list warnings about where and how individuals can transport firearms on their websites.
State Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, a Democrat from Brooklyn, said it’s up to the gun-owners to understand New York gun laws before they try to bring a gun into the city.
“I think it is on the smart traveler who is a responsible gun owner to do [their] research,” Simon said. “The people who are checking you in are not experts in these types of things.”
State Sen. Liz Kruger of Manhattan also said it’s up to gun owners to learn the laws in the jurisdiction they visit, but she said punishments should not be too harsh.
“If you need a license or carry permit to have a gun in New York, that should apply regardless of where you live,” Kruger said in an email. “That said, I think confiscation, fines, and misdemeanors are more appropriate than felony charges.”
A right-to-carry push
Booker, the Georgia man arrested at JFK, was convicted of possessing a firearm, a Class E felony. In 2013, New York classified possession of a firearm as a felony amid a tightening of state gun laws following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.
He appeared before a judge on Sept. 30 and was asked to return on Dec. 4. Booker— who does not have a past criminal record — submitted his gun license, proof of employment and other documents for the judge to review, in hopes of reducing the felony charge to a misdemeanor.
The Bookers have four children at home and said they found it hard to pay for flights back and forth to New York City.
In addition to airport arrest, gun-toting tourists have been arrested at the 9/11 Memorial and Empire State Building. Sometimes they attempted to check their gun with security, thinking they were doing the right thing.
In 2011, after a tourist was arrested at the 9/11 Memorial for attempting to properly store her gun with a security officer on the premises, then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said he would hold a hearing to discuss how exactly the law is enforced and consider changing the law, the New York Post reported.
“Nothing was ever done about it,” said New York State Rifle and Pistol Association President Tom King. “[Silver’s effort] was lip-service that was being paid by the Democrats to the people of New York and the people of the nation, lots of whom travel through New York State.”
King said that arrests at airports like these were part of the reason why the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association sued the city in a case concerning a New York City rule that barred gun owners from traveling outside the city with their guns. On Dec. 2, 2019, the United States Supreme Court discussed this case, but the court has yet to vote. The Supreme Court may decide to dismiss the case because the New York City rule is no longer in effect.
The NYPD has staunchly opposed loosening city gun restrictions, however. In 2017, then-Commissioner James O’Neill urged Congress to vote against the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which would enable people with out-of-state licenses to bring their guns into New York City and carry on the crowded streets and subways. O’Neill has warned that more guns in the city could jeopardize historic low crime rates. An influx of guns would also complicate cops’ jobs they would not know who is legally carrying firearms, he said.
“I’ve been speaking out against this for months,” O’Neill told ABC7 in December 2017. “I said it’s a risk to public safety but it’s more than that— it’s insanity.”
“We do not need more people with guns in New York City,” he continued. “It’s a threat to everyone in this city and it’s a threat to the men and women in the NYPD.”
Correction: A previous version of this article indicated that possession of a firearm could result in a three-year prison sentence. Individuals convicted of the offense actually face a four-year prison sentence, and up to 15 years if the gun was loaded.
