Unhappily, New York and New Jersey have been helped on their nasty little way by the Third Circuit, which ruled somewhat bizarrely in 2013 that a provision in FOPA that refers only to “vehicles” could not conceivably be held to apply to commercial aircraft. The case was brought by a man named Gregg Revell, a resident of Utah who was arrested by the New Jersey police while on his way to Allentown, Penn. At Newark Airport, Revell missed his connecting flight, necessitating a night’s stay in a hotel. As is standard procedure, he was given back his luggage for the evening and instructed to recheck it the next day. When he attempted to do precisely this, he was arrested — and charged with illegal possession of a firearm.

Revell sued, claiming indignantly that he was protected by FOPA and that the state’s law did not therefore apply. Alas, the courts disagreed. The Third District acknowledged that Section 926A “amended a far more expansive entitlement to ‘transport an unloaded, not readily accessible firearm in interstate commerce,’ which was passed just two months earlier as part of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act” but it ruled anyway that the amendment “benefits only those who wish to transport firearms in vehicles — and not, therefore, any of the kinds of ‘transportation’ that, by necessity, would be involved should a person#…#wish to transport a firearm by foot through an airport terminal or Port Authority site.”

All told, this was a peculiar decision. For a start, it is very difficult to comprehend why airplanes don’t count as “vehicles” when nowhere in the statute is it defined what a “vehicle” is or is not; when 48 of the 50 states consider airplanes to be protected; and when one is, in fact, less able to access firearms put into cargo from the “passenger compartment” of an aircraft than one is from the passengers’ area of a car.