Open Carry Cell Phone Holder Concerns NJ Prosecutor

By Dean Weingarten

Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)- This model is carrying the “edgy” cell phone holder in about the worst or *best* way to make it sensational.

The choice of black holder, black phone and black shorts does the most to make the holder look as though a pistol is in the back pocket.

It does not hold up to close inspection.

From japantrendshop.com:

More a piece of equipment than a regular “cover,” the Gun Grip Case transforms your iPhone 5 into a handgun! Available in black, white or pink, this fake “pistol” works with an app so you can interact with a digital version of the gun in the same color on your iPhone 5 screen. The app means you can play games of Russian Roulette at parties! Don’t worry, you can’t actually shoot anyone!

From cnn.com:

Dellla Fave, a spokesman for the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey, shared a Facebook (FB, Tech30) photo of the iPhone case that he found on a closed social media site for cops. A model poses with her phone tucked into her back pocket, and the protruding case looks like the handle of a semiautomatic compact pistol.

Della Fave said that if a teenager draws the phone in the presence of a cop “the first thing they’re going to see as it’s coming up is the trigger guard and the butt of the gun. This doesn’t seem like a good idea at all to me.”

Note that this is from a Prosecutor’s office in New Jersey, a very political, and likely, anti-second amendment position. It is illegal to openly carry a gun in New Jersey, and police would have probable cause to stop someone who looks as if they are carrying a gun illegally. If the phone holder is pink or white, as shown below, it is less likely that they would be stopped.

The phone holder has some merit as a political statement in the majority of the states where open carry is a right, as it has been in most states throughout most of the history of the United States.  A couple of appellate courts have upheld that history, stating that the mere open carry of a firearm is not sufficient probable cause or reasonable suspicion, by itself, for a “Terry” stop.

In a way, the phone case is a variation on the theme suggested by Perceived Carry Decoy system, a device that has not received the attention that this phone carrier has.

Unlike the phone carrier, the Perceived Carry Decoy is never meant to be “drawn“.  The decoy gun and holster are all on piece of molded plastic, so they cannot be separated.

c2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included. Link to Gun Watch

About Dean Weingarten;

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.