Big Road Trip; Time to Read up on Transport/Use Laws...

[barnbwt]

The states involved are Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, New Mexico, and (ahem) Colorado . I'm only passing through SW Colorado, not shooting there.

I'm not up to date on any of these places besides my native Texas, but I haven't found any restrictions on cased/locked/unloaded bolt-rifles or pump shotguns. Am I missing anything important? Provided I'm not carrying them, would the rules be different for low-cap semi-auto rifles, pistols, or revolvers?

There is very little publicly owned land to shoot freely upon here in NE Texas, so I thought it would be fun to exploit the greater expanses of BLM land within my northern neighbors. I'm trying to determine if figuring out the legalities of the proposition is worth the trouble (hey, gun laws really do "work!" )

I am looking into the regs for shooting on public land in several of these states now, but first I want to make sure merely transporting the arms is okay.

Thanks for the advice, ya'll,
TCB

EDIT: It appears many of the sites I'm looking at are hopelessly out of date, with no references to the new bans in NY or CO. Is a there a go-to source for up to date gun restrictions?

 

[Sam1911]

Just to point this out before the thread gets off on this tangent:

FOPA '86 provides an affirmative defense for transporting any of your firearms through a state as long as you're carrying them unloaded, cased, somewhere in the back where you can't get to them. However, I'd assume from your description of your trip that you have plans to stop and enjoy sites in those states, which makes each state a destination. As a destination, FOPA doesn't cover you "just passing through."

All that to say, you do need to follow the local laws.

Now, if you had to pick a group of states where the local laws should be most favorable to transporting firearms, I'd think you couldn't likely do any better. CO is the one new trouble spot, but if you're just passing through on the way to somewhere else (not stopping, etc.) FOPA does cover you there. And I don't believe you'd be running afoul of their new laws anyway, though without specifics on what guns & mags you're taking, it's hard to say.