BELLEVUE, WA – New York’s draconian gun control laws have struck again with the arrest of NFL athlete Rasheed Walker at LaGuardia Airport after he properly declared a firearm in his checked luggage, an incident which underscores the continued anti-gun extremism in the state, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms declared.
Walker, an offensive lineman with the Green Bay Packers, legally owns the firearm in Wisconsin, according to published reports. He was arrested after declaring the handgun and ammunition to a Delta Air Lines employee at as he checked in for a flight. His attorney told the New York Post Walker did not realize he could not travel with the gun in New York. The gun was locked in a gun box inside his checked baggage.
“Once again,” observed CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “New York’s irrational gun control restrictions are creating legal nightmares for a U.S. citizen who obeyed the law by reporting the firearm in his luggage. Virtually anywhere else in the country, Mr. Walker could legally travel with his firearm by declaring it at check-in, but in New York they treat traveling gun owners like criminals thanks to a statute which should have been nullified decades ago by the Firearm Owner’s Protection Act of 1986.
“New York lawmakers and law enforcement need a crash course on the Second Amendment,” he continued, “and when they discuss gun control at the Legislature in Albany there should be at least one adult in the room who understands what the Supreme Court was telling them with the 2022 ruling in the Bruen case.
“Instead,” Gottlieb observed, “New York legislators have continued to react like spoiled children by not correcting the state’s notoriously regressive and restrictive gun control laws, so that citizens such as Mr. Walker would no longer have to put up with this tyrannical nonsense.”
Walker is reportedly scheduled to appear in court on March 19, where his attorney, Arthur Aidala, predicted the case will be dismissed.
“The charge should never have been brought in the first place,” Gottlieb said, “and Walker should never have been arrested because the law is an abomination.”