For what its worth, I don't believe the shaft can pull far enough to separate without some major body damage on the car. At the plastic shear pins, the outer shaft has to move outward at least 4" (closer to 6" if I remember correctly) before the inner and outer parts can separate.

Your only concern would be if it clasped too easily, which probably won't be an issue. Once everything is in place, the bottom sort of floats, there is no up or down pressure. For the column to clasp in a crash, the column crushes the perforated outer shell of the column between the steering wheel and the floor mount so the sheer pins would break and the inner shaft would slide farther into the outer shaft. Before those shafts can slid inside each other, the outer column housing has to crush, or the steering box has to move towards the firewall. In either event, the sheer pins won't make much difference weather they were previously broken or not.

I suspect that while the column was out of the car, it got dropped on the bottom end which is what sheered the pins, otherwise the outer housing of the column would have been crushed.

Back when we ran the stock bodied Mopars on our local dirt track, we would pop the sheer pins on the column and pull the shafts apart another 3" so we could mount the the wheel and the column closer to the driver and still connect to the steering box. This allowed easier steering without having the power steering connected (a closer wheel gave the driver better leverage). I had one car that got crashed bad enough for the column to pull out of the lower connector at the steering box, even with the sheer pins broken and the column stretched out 3 more inches, the column at the sheer pins did not separate. On that car, the front frame rail got pulled away from the trans crossmember almost 6", rust issues were also involved.