“In his final argument, Reininger claimed his convictions should be reversed because ‘New Jersey’s gun control scheme’ violates his right under the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution to keep and bear arms. We disagree. The Second Amendment does not create ‘a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.'” – New Jersey State Superior Court Opinion in Conviction upheld for man moving to Texas with SUV full of guns [via nj.com]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

64 COMMENTS

  1. “The Second Amendment does not create ‘a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.’”

    Correct, it doesn’t create anything. The Second Amendment PROTECTS the God given right to protect oneself and their family. Oh they forgot the shall not be infringed upon part. Asshats.

    • Very well said. Our rights to free speech, press, religion, KBA, etc. are not granted.

      They are inherent, existing in, of, and by themselves, and pre-date the constitution and our current government. The bill of rights merely guarantees them.

      • That’s all well and good, but:

        Don’t give grabbers the satisfaction.

        Don’t provide or obligate the LEO with PC to examine you closely and unearth violations guaranteed to get you hooked up.

        Poor judgment = increased risk of loss be it property, freedom, or life. To have weapons and weapon cases in plain view in the SUV; a loaded handgun in the glove box; in today’s hyper sensitive gun aware environment? Gimme a break. Self immolating ignorant looser comes to mind.

        If it had been bangers or crack heads instead of a patrolman that first saw him sleeping in his SUV, he could well have lost both his guns, his SUV, AND his life.

        • Looser than WHAT? “Looser” is an adjective; “loser” a noun. Don’t make yourself a noun by not knowing the difference!

  2. What a dumbass…..

    let’s go over some tips for moving with your guns to another state.

    1. Planning. sometimes you may have to move through anti-rights states, it may be unavoidable but it can be minimized. minimum research found me a route that avoids new jersey, and only cuts 65 miles through NY.

    2. when traveling with firearms, keep them cased in unmarked containers out of public view. using a trunk or privacy partitions in the cargo area

    3. when traveling through anti-rights states with loaded guns in plain view, it is generally inadvisable to be hanging out with said guns in the parking lot of a bank at three in the morning.

    4. when you get arrested by anti rights cops in anti rights states that you could’ve avoided, for having loaded guns in plain view, in the parking lot of a closed bank at three in the morning, as a non-attorney I advise you not to skip bail

    just follow these four simple tips and you’ll probably not end up like this guy.

    talk about going “full-retard” I nominate for IGOTD

    • While it is true he made some dumb mistakes…
      There still should be no reason for any of this. Even on this site I see WAY too many gun owners that just put up with the stupid, arbitrary laws that get passed. The attitude is “Well that is New Jersey” or California, or Maryland, or Colorado, or…
      We need solidarity that we believe there should be no acceptance of this.
      For the most part, we gun owners are the most responsible, law abiding people there are… That is the problem. We all do our best to follow the laws, all the while gun control advocates simply garner support for these new laws. How long do you guys really think it will be before they make criminals of all of us?
      When they pass laws that limit the number of guns you can legally own, are you selling off all you own to meet their limit? When they limit mags to 3 rounds, are you going to block every mag you own?
      When are you guys going to realize it doesn’t end until we are all disarmed? Do you not see the path that wanting to own a gun will be declared some type of mental disorder and we will all be “reasonably” exempted from purchasing a gun?
      I realize that it is easy to say “he’s a dumbass” – but wait until you are the dumbass because you actually chose to keep the last gun they let you have.

      • actually, stupid laws have been mainly confined to stupid states.

        Colorado’s gun control won’t fly, when the republicans take the state back all the crap goes down the drain.

        I don’t anticipate my state ever passing laws anything like NJ. so there. It is easy to say he’s a dumbass, because he is a dumbass.

      • @ Dustin:
        As Erik succinctly pointed out, this actor was being plain dumb. The only thing in his favor is that his arrest occurred in 2009 and he may not have been as SA about gun issues in general, and transportating precautions in particular, as he should have been; especially on the *legality* side of things, being from Maine and all. But that’s about all the benefit of the doubt I’ll give Reininger.

        There is nothing new about transporting firearms being subject to heightened scrutiny in most jurisdictions, especially the libby upper east coast. He had an obligation to educate himself about any state restrictions and secure his weapons in a manner that wouldn’t invite…trouble.

      • Very well put. We hang together or we all hang separately. If you simply dismiss this guy as a nincompoop unworthy of your sympathy or aid, WHAT MAKES YOU WORTHY OF OURS?

    • I feel bad for this guy, and this whole ordeal is a massive waste of taxpayer money, but for the love of all that’s holy – Erik is right. What a focking moron.

      • I don’t feel any sympathy at all for Reininger.

        With his clear lack of good judgement, I’m certain I wouldn’t want to be within shooting range of him.

        Would you?

  3. While I do sympathize with the man and do find his arrest more than a bit leery, he was very stupid. For one, falling asleep in the vehicle in a parking lot, especially that of a bank. 2 he was even more stupid for not having his firearms covered and perhaps even locked.I don’t blame him for having his handgun ready to go, but to have his rifles supposedly in plain sight is just sloppy.

    I could also see how someone may be thinking he was waiting to rob the bank, but this seems much more like “O no’s he’s got the evil guns we’s got to protect society” moments. I have a feeling that 2 tragedies will come from this if they already haven’t. Him with a lengthy prison sentence and all his firearms divided up amongst the police (thieves in this case imo) or melted down.

    Remember folks if you’re trying to escape a place like New Jersey, stow the firearms properly, keep the speed limit, use your turn signals, and stay on the highway as long as your alert level and gasoline supply will allow. Do whatever you have to to keep from attracting attention. Flying Spaghetti Monster be with you.

    You know, 200+ years a go, my ancestors would have loved to have escaped the south to be free, now it seems that I’m lucky they didn’t else I’d not have my freedom.What little left there is of it anyway.

    • Better yet… avoid New Jersey all together. Beautiful ride through PA and NY..
      .
      But it’s so sad that Americans have to TAKE COVER from their own governments’ abuses. PROTEST TODAY at the IRS office closest to you at NOON. Big Government is the problem, in taxation, gun control, education, you name it the problem is over centralization and control freaks run amok.

  4. What did we learn here?

    Put a blanket over your shit or get a cargo cover for your SUV’s cargo compartment.

    If you’re gonna carry a concealed handgun illegally in the NE, don’t speed and dont spend one second in a slave state than you absolutely must.

    Also, you can’t scream about your rights being violated when you brazenly defy the law of the state you are in. The guns in cases probably could have made for a good case, but having the loaded handgun sealed his fate.

    Moral of the story? Research and take careful routes.

    • While all you’ve said is true, I’m starting to come to a different conclusion. I think that we need to do more protesting in these states even if we don’t live there. We need to think about the example of the civil rights movement in the 60’s where lots of folks came to the segregated south to stand in solidarity with the African-American community. If a state tramples its citizens’ rights and we do nothing, we shouldn’t be surprised if the anti’s see what they can get away with and come after us in our states.

      • Its not just protesting, talk is cheap. There are defense funds and local pro-gun organizations in CT, NY & NJ. I do not see a wealth of support coming from out of state. In CT, the defense fund is being funded by members digging deep at the monthly meetings while we pass around a hat and pig roasts and car washes or what have you.

        If you want to support the efforts to gain the slave state back, it will take money. Either by contributing to grass roots orgs or political PACS who are trying to get pro-gun candidates.

        Talk is cheap, action and money is required

        • Yes. Bloomberg is using his fortune to see his will done in other states. PA now has a grabber AG courtesy of Mayor Mike that is doing all she can to limit our RTBA (which has been pretty limited so far, admittedly; mostly helping Philly to flaunt State law). At any rate, the grabbers don’t say “oh well, not my state,” and neither should we.

        • Pascal is correct. Come protest with us, any time and we’d love to have you, but to WIN ELECTIONS we need folk to pump MONEY into our County level GOP organizations.
          .
          That is where the real election work gets done, mailings, advertising, organization of GOTV activities. We need volunteers to work the phone banks which are available pretty much every day.
          .
          WORK is what’s needed. Volunteers and money. Like Pascal said.. talk is cheep..
          .
          Happy IRS protest day… Off to Mays Landing NJ

  5. What a straw man construction. Who argued before the court that ” ‘a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose” is at play here? No, the argument is that New Jersey prohibitions are not reasonable.

    • It seems to me that about 97% of the political discourse of the past decade, regardless of topic, is just a giant straw man convention.

      • If your ideas can’t compete in the real world, try competing in a made-up world.

  7. While we may disagree with the prohibitions in NJ, NY, CA, CO or elsewhere, and rightfully so, the fact remains that these prohibitions are the law. The fact that one does not care for a particular law, or does not find a regulation to be constitutional does not provide a defense against the application of said laws. Constitutionality is not determined by an individual, but by the Supreme Court. That being noted, to simply state that one will not abide by a particular statute concerning firearms, and expecting a positive outcome is by any measure a fool’s folly.

    • An individual has just as much right to declare a law unconstitutional as the Supreme Court. The courts cannot have any power that an individual does not also have, unless we live in a dictatorship.

      • “An individual has just as much right to declare a law unconstitutional as the Supreme Court.”

        Not according to the Constitution. That’s the responsibility of the judiciary. Sure, you can howl, but that’s all it is if you’re not a federal judge (or making a persuasive argument before one). Which is a great reminder that elections are as much about the candidate’s potential judicial appointments as anything else.

      • This is America, you have the right to feel that way-good luck with how far that feeling will take you.

      • An individual can declare anything he wants, but that declaration has no force of law, regardless of whether it’s right or wrong. Do you really think that anyone can say anything and it’s law?

        I declare Tuesday Free Ice Cream Day at your house. Why not? According to you I have just as much authority as any court. Now start dishing!

    • There were lawful ways to transport his weapons from Maine to Texas, he chose to thwart them. Then he lied to police. Then he skipped bail. Then he lived as a fugitive. Idiot.

      No sympathy. He’s a cancer to the 2A defenders. I’ve moved TX>NY>TX>NY>TX. No hiccups, no broken laws, and I’m a gun owner. Do your homework, obey the law, don’t risk losing your rights by undermining them with stupidity. There’s no 2A right to keep & bear in a jail cell.

    • Not that I don’t agree the individual used some poor judgement, but isn’t the reason the Supreme Court makes those decisions on constitutionality usually the result of such a fool’s folly.

    • That’s what King George said,”I am the law and as good English subjects, you will obey the laws I dictate”, or words to that effect; we all know how that turns out.

      By the way, the Supreme Court also said that slavery was legal because if you freed the blacks, then those former slaves could keep and bear arms anywhere a free man could legally go.

      So just because 9 fallable, corruptable and very imperfect human beings in black robes say something , does make it law, but doesn’t always make it right or just; but, if you don’t have enough back up with guns and the willingness to use them to protect fundamental god given rights like our founding fathers did; then you will pay the price for being stupid.

      • SCOTUS held that slavery was legal because, well, it was. It was constitutional, too. Why wouldn’t it be, when the constitution was originally written by people, many of which were slaveholders who did not see any ethical objections to the institution? It took a constitutional amendment to ban the practice country-wide.

        SCOTUS, and courts in general, are required to rule in accordance with the law, and not their conscience. That’s why we call it “rule of law”.

  8. So the government employees in robes said that for the safety of government employees with costume jewelry, government employees should be allowed to search two closed containers inside a vehicle. Bullshit. Nothing in those containers was any danger to any government employee at the time of the stop. It is a shame that Texas extradited him.

  9. As one who recently made the trip from PA to ME and back with several firearms in a Chevy Tahoe, I can tell you it is not possible to make this trip without passing through several slave states. I was a bit better prepared for my trip than this fellow, though. Just before crossing into NY, I unloaded my carry piece and stowed it (in a case) with my long guns in the back, filled up on fuel, and did not stop until I was in NH where my CCW is honored again. It makes you feel like a criminal just for passing through NY, CN, and MA, but I’m guessing thats what these lawmakers want. Thank the spagetti monster that I didn’t run into trouble. (bad guy or LE trouble) It was a long 6 hours to feel defensless, or actually be defensless in my case as I am still recoveing after being hit head on by a semi.

    As for this fellow, I agree that he did it wrong. His first mistake was where he stopped. I’d like to think that if he hadnt had the loaded pistol, that this would have been a non-issue, but we all know thats not true. NJ and NY especially are making examples out of gun owners to make a point right now. They are flexing thier legal muscles and admiring how strong they look in the mirror.

    I understand he did break the law. An unjust, unconstitutional law, but still, a law. But, FIVE YEARS in prison for it? You can get drunk and kill people with your car in NJ , NY and MA and get less time than that….. Unless your a pol, then you can do it for free….

    • To be fair, he might have gotten less time if he hadn’t skipped bail and ran. The law tends to frown on that.

    • Maybe I missed the real point, but… YOU SURVIVED GETTING HIT HEAD-ON BY A SEMI?!? You can’t just throw that into a conversation and walk away. Not nohow.

      Anyway, yeah. This guy was beyond foolish, but the “crimes” he was convicted of are an outrage.

  10. If he’d just had his handgun unloaded he probably would’ve been okay. If the rest had been in padlocked hard cases, he absolutely would’ve gotten by on FOPA’s transport clause. Not stopping for the night in a parking lot in a slave state would’ve been the smartest thing.

    Yeah, the charges are stupid, and I think NJ’s firearms laws should get reamed out in court, but in this case it was all totally avoidable with a few more minutes of planning on Reininger’s part.

    • Yeah, this is probably true. I’ve been to New Jersey many times, and to NY several times, and never had any contact with the police. I wasn’t armed, but I could have been if I had it stashed. The rule, “use your head and don’t do anything stupid” goes a long way toward avoiding contact with the police. Granted, this isn’t always true. Sometimes they’ll seek you out for stupid or immoral reasons. But it’s not a bad rule of thumb.

      Even if this guy picked a bad place to sneak a snooze, if he didn’t have any hardware showing the cops probably would have been perfectly satisfied with the explanation that he was driving long distance and needed a nap to continue driving safely. They might even have directed him to a rest stop or something instead of throwing him in jail. Unless they were dicks, but by and large John Law just wants peace and quiet on his beat.

      • No laws out there prohibiting stupidity (not enough jails in the world). The Constitution does prohibit violating the rights of even stupid people….

        • THIS is why we should be outraged by this. I’ll say it again.

          The Constitution prohibits violating the rights of even stupid people. New Jersey has violated this man’s rights.

  11. A popular meme with the anti-gunners these days is to claim that the 2nd amendment allows you to keep and bear muskets, in other words, the arms that were standard when the 2A was written. Right, ha ha, very witty. Gun rights supporters, however, should grab this and reverse it for our own meme point. If muskets were state-of-the-art arms issued to soldiers when the 2A was adopted, then modern citizens should have access to the same level of weaponry carried by modern military troops. The spirit of the 2A (of the entire constitution) is to empower the citizenry with more authority (and might) than the government so that a tyranny cannot subdue the people by taking command of the government. The constitution not only assumes that common citizens are honest and responsible enough to be fully armed, it relies upon it.

  12. Totally agree with everyone that this guy was an idiot, but it does sort of point up the silliness of the transportation laws. If he’d stopped at a hotel like everyone else, instead of cheaping out and trying to sleep in his car for free, chances are he’d have passed quietly through the state and reached his destination without issue. So what’s the point?

    • No laws out there prohibiting idiocy or cheapness (not enough jails in the world). The Constitution does prohibit violating the rights of even cheap idiots….

  13. The article states: “Federal law requires that guns be transported “in a locked container other than the glove compartment or console.”

    In South Carolina, unless you have been convicted of a felony, it is perfectly legal to keep a loaded handgun in the glove compartment or console of your vehicle. No permit required.

    • Though the statement is misleading, the article is almost certainly referring to the “safe passage” provision of FOPA (18 USC § 926A), which does require that guns be inaccessible and unloaded.

      Of course, one would only need to avail oneself of that provision if travelling through a place where carrying or possessing the gun(s) was prohibited by state or local law.

  14. Too many jurists seem to have taken the ‘any’ in “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose” to mean “at least one” rather than “all imaginable ones”. The totality of the decision quite clearly indicates it was meant to indicate the former. The fact that Heller didn’t shut the door on all gun control laws should not be taken to mean that no gun control law is off-limits under the constitution.

    • Oh, but the collectivists will run with that until they are forced not to. And will probably still run with it even then. They are lawless.

  18. The whole jumping bail, going on the lam and forcing the state to extradite him from Texas thing probably accounts for more jail time than the originol violation.

    Also, how did he come to the attention of Texas law officers that got him processed for a ride back to NJ? Did he do still another stupid thing that red flagged him for the cops? He knew he was wanted on charges in NJ. He couldn’t refrain from acting stupid?

    Unjust laws are just that. But having a felony conviction colors the rest of your life, regardless of the caliber of the law you broke to get that conviction.

    • He probably was found by NJ investigators who called TX authorities to make the arrest since NJ officers don’t have authority in TX

  19. Conscience, Morality and Rights my good friends…Conscience, Morality and Rights.

    For those who may not know–and there are, unfortunately many who do not — there exists a power of determination which only the more informed of Citizens hold when called upon to serve as members of a jury.
    Associated with the term ‘nullification’, as in ‘Jury Nullification’.
    Definable in part as ‘the decision by a jury to acquit a defendant who has violated a law that the jury believes is unjust or wrong’.
    Nullification is what is may be understood in context as the third within the following phrases: Soap Box, Ballot Box, Jury Box, Cartridge Box.

    Given the information as provided in Mr. Reininger’s case:
    I’ve no reservation whatsoever in stating that had I been one of the jurors in this case, I would have fully informed the other members of their power of nullification, and insisted it was their Moral obligation and duty as Morally-conscious Citizens to acquit Mr. Reininger of all charges.
    http://dustinshanereininger.com/

  20. I can’t remember who first said it, but there goes a saying that the absolute most offensive of free speech must be protected, for it is the speech that will be attacked and if silenced, all speech takes a hit. That’s kinda how I feel about this guy. He did some really stupid things, all of which should be legal under the second amendment. To throw this guy under the bus because he broke a bad law in a stupid way is to weaken any future arguments against the bad law.

    • +1

      Reading the comments above, it appears that most of you think ignorance is a crime worthy of 5 years in prison. Pulatso got it right.

      Stop saying Reininger shouldn’t have done this or that, Yes, he made some less-intelligent decisions, but that is not the problem. He has been convicted of violating bad laws, and thrown into prison as an example for everyone else to see. The judge made it clear that NJ does not tolerate people violating their laws, even when just peacefully passing through the state. He sentenced him t0 5 years to make a point, not as any form of justice.

  21. What you guys have to understand is that they believe that since the Heller only struck down an outright ban on all handguns, they think they can ban everything as long as you can have A gun. That’s legitimately what they believe and will continue to say that until the SCOTUS does something about it. Apparently in their opinion, the legislature gets to decide what guns are in common use, which means that if your liberal judges and legislators don’t own one, its therefore dangerous and unusual. The SCOTUS needs to get on this shit FAST.

  22. There is a clear legal difference between “carrying” a gun and “transporting” a gun under federal law.

    Also–no victim, no crime.

Comments are closed.