Jim,
What's your opinion of the Gun Free School Zones Act of 1995? The Second Amendment Foundation indicated that they would tackle it at some point, but had bigger fish to fry currently. Does the average Joe need to worry that in travels out of ones home State, he/she might pass within 1000' of a school while in his vehicle?
This is a legaly dicey issue--and a controversial one in various threads throughout this forum. As an attorney, I obviously must counsel compliance with the law (however absurd the law may be). With that said, the federal GFSZA is enforced with a tremendous amount of discretion. There are plenty of post-
Lopez cases in which various Courts of Appeals have affirmed the constitutionality of the statute as it was revised by Congress in 1995 (to include a "Commerce Clause jurisdictional element" that was absent before
Lopez and on which the Supreme Court's decision turned).
In practice, I have not yet seen a case involving an otherwise law-abiding citizen whose ONLY crime was a federal GFSZ violation. Every case I have seen involved a drug dealer; gang member; someone who could not legally possess a gun under either federal, state, or territorial law; someone who was strongly suspected of committing some other crime where the evidence fell just short of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law; or (in the case of
U.S. v. Tait, 202 F.3d 1320 (11th Cir. 2000)) where the government attempted to challenge both whether a convicted felon had his civil rights restored (he did) and whether Alabama's skeletal concealed pistol permitting statute required an adequate background check to meet the federal law's exception (it did; subsequently, the Alabama Legislature did enact a new background check provision that further solidifies Alabama's position).
As a practical matter, if the federal government started seeking out individuals who were carrying handguns in other states under reciprocity laws (or open carry or constitutional carry laws), were committing no violation of the applicable state's gun laws, and were not involved in any demonstrable criminal activity, we would see a rightful outcry of protests demanding either a full repeal of the federal GFSZA or elimination of the additional 1000-foot buffer and/or expanding the "permit exception" to accommodate widespread state reciprocity laws that did not exist when that exception was originally written in 1990 (at that time, only Indiana and Michigan recognized other states' permits; no other state recognized any permits issued by any other state).
If a person is a frequent traveler to a particular state and that state issues a nonresident license, I would advise that obtaining that state's license is a good investment.
