Fight for Ex-Marine Facing NYC Gun Charge

[Twitchin Kitten]

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I think Anthony is going to give us the best answer on this one but I'm thinking this is over the top.
There are a couple more stories like this regarding the city. Is this a matter of "you should have known the laws before coming" or "NYC should be more clear on what you can and can't bring into the city and how"?
Is this info readily available to anyone coming from out of town?
Did this marine travel by air? How did they miss that on the plane? If he had to declare it in his luggage, why wasn't he informed at the airport, or is that not the job of the airline at all?

History of NYC gun law: <--clicky if you want to go to the story page. I used code tags to save space copying the article.

Code:

[b]The strange birth of NY’s gun laws[/b]
Last Updated: 11:43 PM, January 15, 2012
Posted: 11:15 PM, January 15, 2012

Michael A. Walsh
Recent months have seen a former Marine from Indiana, a Tea Party activist from California and a nurse from Tennessee all arrested and charged in New York City for possession of firearms they had legal permits to carry back home. All were “nabbed” when they naively sought to check the weapon with security.

These innocents fell afoul of the nation’s toughest gun laws. But few New Yorkers know how those laws came to be.

The father of New York gun control was Democratic city pol “Big Tim “Sullivan — a state senator and Tammany Hall crook, a criminal overseer of the gangs of New York.

In 1911 — in the wake of a notorious Gramercy Park blueblood murder-suicide — Sullivan sponsored the Sullivan Act, which mandated police-issued licenses for handguns and made it a felony to carry an unlicensed concealed weapon.

This was the heyday of the pre-Prohibition gangs, roving bands of violent toughs who terrorized ethnic neighborhoods and often fought pitched battles with police. In 1903, the Battle of Rivington Street pitted a Jewish gang, the Eastmans, against the Italian Five Pointers. When the cops showed up, the two underworld armies joined forces and blasted away, resulting in three deaths and scores of injuries. The public was clamoring for action against the gangs.

Problem was the gangs worked for Tammany. The Democratic machine used them as shtarkers (sluggers), enforcing discipline at the polls and intimidating the opposition. Gang leaders like Monk Eastman were even employed as informal “sheriffs,” keeping their turf under Tammany control.

The Tammany Tiger needed to rein in the gangs without completely crippling them. Enter Big Tim with the perfect solution: Ostensibly disarm the gangs — and ordinary citizens, too — while still keeping them on the streets.

In fact, he gave the game away during the debate on the bill, which flew through Albany: “I want to make it so the young thugs in my district will get three years for carrying dangerous weapons instead of getting a sentence in the electric chair a year from now.”

Sullivan knew the gangs would flout the law, but appearances were more important than results. Young toughs took to sewing the pockets of their coats shut, so that cops couldn’t plant firearms on them, and many gangsters stashed their weapons inside their girlfriends’ “bird cages” — wire-mesh fashion contraptions around which women would wind their hair.

Ordinary citizens, on the other hand, were disarmed, which solved another problem: Gangsters had been bitterly complaining to Tammany that their victims sometimes shot back at them.

So gang violence didn’t drop under the Sullivan Act — and really took off after the passage of Prohibition in 1920. Spectacular gangland rubouts — like the 1932 machine-gunning of “Mad Dog” Coll in a drugstore phone booth on 23rd Street — became the norm.

Congressional hearings in the 1950s, followed by the feds’ prolonged assault on the Mafia succeeded in tamping down traditional gangland violence, but guns are still easily available to criminals.

Today, the spate of tourist arrests has some politicians scrambling to reassess the laws. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver says he’ll hold committee hearings to examine enforcement of the law and recommend possible changes.

That’s a good first step. Every state but Illinois has some form of concealed-carry permission — although some, like New York, California and New Jersey, are heavily restricted. Some sort of reciprocity is needed.

Meanwhile, savor the irony of an edict written by a corrupt politician to save his bad guys from the electric chair’s now being used against law-abiding citizens from other states.

And the rest of the story? Big Tim was already suffering from tertiary syphilis when he wrote his law. He went mad soon thereafter and was sent to a sanitarium in 1912. He eventually escaped. His severed body was found on railroad tracks in The Bronx in August 1913.

The dedicated lifelong “public servant” left behind an estate valued at more than $2 million.

Fight for Ex-Marine Facing NYC Gun Charge <-- clicky

Updated: Monday, 16 Jan 2012, 6:27 PM EST
Published : Monday, 16 Jan 2012, 3:45 PM EST

(FOX News) - A third-generation Marine arrested in New York City after trying to check his Indiana-registered handgun with security officers made an "honest mistake" and should not face prison time, his attorney said Monday.

Ryan Jerome, a 28-year-old former private first class whose father and grandfather were Marines, faces three and half years in prison after being arrested Sept. 27 for carrying a .45-caliber Ruger that was legally registered in his home state.

Jerome, of West Bend, Ind., had approached security officers at the Empire State Building to check the weapon before he was taken into custody, according to his attorney, who said it was the man's first visit to New York City.

"Ryan Jerome is neither a criminal nor someone with an illegal gun," his attorney, Mark Bederow, said in an interview with FOXNews.com.

"It's plainly obvious to anyone who looks at the facts and circumstances of this case that he made an honest mistake and was looking to follow the New York laws and be responsible," Bederow said. "He tried to be careful -- that's the irony here."

Jerome, who has not been indicted, could face three and a half years in prison if the case goes to trial and he is convicted of carrying the weapon under New York State law.

Jerome's fellow Marines, meanwhile, have organized an online campaign to persuade Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance to drop the charges against him.

Boston lawyer and veteran Marine Dave Bruce has organized an online petition through the website leatherneck.com that plans to send its first 14 emails to Cyrus, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the New York Post reported.

The Manhattan district attorney was not immediately available for comment when contacted Monday by FOXNews.com.

[LKTraz]

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I'm not sure how general this knowledge is outside the neighboring states (NJ, PA, CT) and nearby DE but, it's pretty commonly known that NYC is a zero carry zone. Even if you have a federal all-carry permit (which the Clinton administration made all but impossible to procure) you will be hasseled to no end.

It would seem that this fellow was under the impression that his permit applied outside of his home state. That doesn't hold true though. There are several states that reciprocally honor permits issued by other (usually neighboring) states but not all. There is a big push going on right now for a national reciprocity but it is nowhere near even getting out of committee much less on the floor of congress.