Hop over to Mike’s and see this picture
State lines aren’t some magical force-field. Heck most of the time they aren’t even clearly marked, and given that we don’t live in a soviet state, there’s nobody checking your papers at the border, so there are times when if a state boundary IS significant some silliness can be had. Like when I was younger my folks and I would hike the same mountain every year. The Mountain was in Maine, we lived in Maine. To get to the mountain we needed to drive into New Hampshire..then back into Maine…then back into New Hampshire…then back into Maine again. The road slithered like a snake across the boarders of the two states. There were road signs spaced about a quarter mile apart for our sheer amusement.
Still if Dad had a permit to carry in Maine, suddenly he would be committing a felony…even if he was open carrying which is legal in both Maine, and New Hampshire, because both Maine and New Hampshire both define carrying in the car as “Concealed”.
Now can you tell me what’s different on one side of the line vs. the other? Its not distinctive, nor do any rules of self-defense apply. Hell you can STAND in one state, and shoot people in the next, so its not even like the laws are protecting anybody (not that people who bother with permits suddenly don’t get concerned when it comes to Murder vs. Justifiable force).
Mike is safe to carry any way he wishes on one side of the line, but not on the other. There are lots of lines like this for anybody who carries a firearm, and the more you think about them, the less they make sense.
So erase the lines.
“there’s nobody checking your papers at the border”
Just wait. The TSA will do that under the guise of terrorism protection.
Thanks for the link Weer’d.
One thing I didn’t note in my post. I know the lady who used to live in the house right where that marking is. The line disects the house, so part of her house is in DE and part of it is PA.
Keep in mind that you can’t legally CCW in your own home in DE without a permit. Imagine the pure idiocy of breaking the law based upon where you were on your own property and / or inside your own home.
I wonder how she paid property taxes…
I dunno about state lines, but I had a friend who owned a business that was on a town line, and his business was essentially two plots of land in two towns and he paid property taxes that way.
So, what happens if you are straddling the line, pointing the firearm along the line?
Whose laws are you breaking then? Will the police have to “freeze” you in place and break out the micrometers to determine which part of you or the gun is in which state?
Silly politicians! Rights are for citizens!
Don’t recall where I read this, but I believe Mark Steyn wrote once about a New Hampshire town that was split by the US-Canada border. He got lost driving there one night, and didn’t realize he was no longer in the United States until he noticed that the street signs were in French.
That seems pretty fantastic to me — but then the lady whose house was split in half by the state line seems pretty fantastic too…
I like Weer’d’s point about standing in one state and shooting into the other. If someone were to set up a shooting range on the border, with separate entrances for PA and DE, would there be different rules for different lanes? I imagine there’d have to be. It gets even more interesting if there’s an outdoor range.
Maybe we’re just not vocal enough. I know that, a bunch of years ago, northern Massachusetts small-business owners complained about people crossing the invisible line into New Hampshire to buy goods without sales tax… resulting in special exemptions for stores a certain distance from the border. (Oh, great… now we replaced an invisible line that at least shows on a map with one that doesn’t.)
Bottom line: it shouldn’t be a felony to cross the street.