The United States is a pretty special place, especially when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms. As James Madison noted in Federalist 46, most other nations at the time of the Founding didn’t trust the people to keep and bear arms. Sadly, not much has changed in the centuries since, and the U.S. is still one of just a handful of nations where owning a gun (much less carrying one) is seen as an individual right and not a privilege doled out by the State.
Last week we covered the plight of a Texas man who’s been stuck in a Mexican prison after he got lost and accidentally crossed the border with a gun and ammunition in his truck. A 69-year-old grandmother from Oklahoma now finds herself in a similarly precarious situation in the Bahamas after authorities found a gun in her purse while she was getting back on board the cruise ship that had docked in Nassau.
Lawyers for Mary Robinson, 69, say she simply forgot the .380 pistol was in her purse when she boarded the Liberty of the Seas.
It went unnoticed by security in Fort Lauderdale but was detected in Nassau when Robinson got back on board the ship after taking her adopted 12-year-old son sightseeing.
A Bahamian judge gave her the option of a $8,000 fine but when the weeping retiree couldn’t pay on the spot she was sentenced last Thursday to a default two-year jail term.
Robinson’s family from Sand Springs, Oklahoma, have launched a GoFundMe appeal to raise cash for her release from the notorious Fox Hill Correctional Centre.
But for now, the silver-haired widow who has a ‘touch of dementia’ will remain behind bars in the rat and maggot-infested lockup which has featured on hit Netflix show Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons.
A court in Nassau, the Bahamian capital, heard that Robinson booked the four-night Royal Caribbean cruise to celebrate her adopted son Johnny’s birthday.
It’s always a good idea to check your luggage before you start packing, but it’s also wise to have a gear bag that’s exclusively used for your guns and ammunition to avoid any errant rounds ending up at the bottom of your carry-on or checked baggage. Even then, the Ammo Fairy has a strange habit of leaving rounds in unusual places, so it doesn’t hurt to give the once-over to your luggage even if you don’t use those bags for time at the range.
Last year there were a number of fairly high-profile incidents involving U.S. tourists who’d accidentally brought guns with them on vacation to Turks and Caicos and ended up in prison there, which helped shine a spotlight on the incredibly restrictive gun laws in most Caribbean nations. Accident or not, having even a single round of ammunition in your luggage or purse can result in a prison term for those unable to pay thousands of dollars in fines.
That GoFundMe is now fully funded, so hopefully Robinson will be soon be out of prison and home to celebrate Christmas with her family… and to warn other tourists traveling to the Bahamas not to make the same mistake she did.
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