"The number of Americans trying to smuggle guns on to planes keeps rising"
Is the actual headline. And it's one I find fault with. The mere presence of a gun in somebody's bag does not imply "smuggling".
As alien as it seems to us in the UK (and elsewhere), there are certain parts of the US where people think absolutely nothing of carrying a gun around with them all the time. I have little doubt that some percentage of these finds are just due to forgetfulness, and not to any malign intent.
I've lost how many multitool pocket knives in my bags when travelling because I forgot I had it, even when I check my bags one ends up being discovered in some nook or cranny in a bag.
I have a hard time thinking I wouldn't be constantly mindful of the fact I had a gun on me, and would never pack one in a bag, but I'm not everybody and I have never carried everyday. There are parts of rural America and some cities where it is done as part of their every day carry and no one blinks an eye. So I could see it happening.
The proper, legal way to transport a firearm while flying is in the bag.
Last time I did it (this was before 2001 and the police state hysteria we're in now) all that you had to do was get a little sticker for the bags handle at the check in counter (they asked us to show that the gun was unloaded.)
Not even a big deal.
There is no history of guns leaping up, loading themselves and killing people.
"Last time I did it (this was before 2001 and the police state hysteria we're in now) all that you had to do was get a little sticker for the bags handle at the check in counter (they asked us to show that the gun was unloaded.)"
This is still the case, post-2001. You bring the firearms in a locked, hard case and you show the gate agent that they are unloaded, then you lock the case in front of them and they put some stickers on it.
The only sketchy part is, you have to take a firearm out in the ticket line to show it to the gate agent, who has a hazy-at-best understanding of whether that particular firearm is loaded or not.
I grew up in the south and it was no big deal when kids would come to school with their shotguns and rifles on racks in the back of their trucks. Usually they had gone hunting that morning. Now they would be labeled as terrorists and probably shot upon entering the parking lot (I jest, but only sort of).
At airports I have had to mail back to myself a very nice engraved money clip multiple times. The reason? It has a 2" or so pocket knife type blade on it. Each time TSA treated me like I was trying to smuggle something when I put the clip in the bin for the xray machine. If I was trying to smuggle something I would not throw it in the bin with everything else.
In my part of SW Missouri, which I'll grant is in part of the cultural South, in the late '40s my father and his peers would store their long guns in their high school lockers during the day. The late Supreme Court Justice Scalia, three years younger, carried his .22 target rifle on the NYC subways to and from practice.
One reason I've elsewhere referred to what's happening with skyrocketing legal concealed carry as a renorming, we're just returning to a not all that old normal.
"I have little doubt that some percentage of these finds are just due to forgetfulness, and not to any malign intent."
As a gun owner, a CCW holder and a sometimes open carrier of firearms - privately and publicly - let me state in no uncertain terms: if you forget you are carrying a gun, you have no business carrying a gun.
I'm sure in this stance its not that they forgot about the gun its self but when you have something on you all the time like a phone or a ring or a gun in this case. You might forget when you can't bring it into a building. In areas where guns are common place like SW Missouri there aren't a whole lot of places you can't bring your gun so its not always at the front of peoples thought processes.
And in most of the places you "can't bring your gun" the law in Missouri is such that you can only be asked to leave, and if the police have to be called, the first time it's a wrist slap (although that of course says nothing about trespassing etc.).
The last time I flew in Europe, there was a huge skip next to the security check. As far as I could see, it was full of exactly two things: bottles of drinks and bottles of sunscreen. It seems a reasonable assumption that these weren't being "smuggled" on board for nefarious purposes but had instead been left in people's bags unintentionally or due to ignorance of the rules and then picked up on a scan when it was too late to transfer anything worth keeping to checked luggage. One would hope that anyone possessing a firearm would be more aware of it, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if at least some non-zero level of passengers in areas where people routinely and legally carry do forget.
> As alien as it seems to us in the UK (and elsewhere), there are certain parts of the US where people think absolutely nothing of carrying a gun around with them all the time. I have little doubt that some percentage of these finds are just due to forgetfulness, and not to any malign intent.
I'm reminded of this story: A man accidentally had a loaded gun in his luggage, got past security, realized it in flight, and then reported himself afterward:
Have you ever accidentally brought a bottle of shampoo or scissors? You are vastly underestimating how common it is to have a gun in some parts of the country. It is just an everyday item like anything else to some people.
Even though understandable this does not explain the rising numbers. We do not know whether they are normalised or simply due to the fact that more people have guns, but it could be a trend. Also, the whole point of airport security is to find weapons, so it is also reasonable to think that people would be more cautious about accidentally bringing a gun rather than a shampoo bottle (which you can actually bring if it is small enough).
Concealed carry license holders are skyrocketing, as are states where no license is required (details on request).
It's a truly amazing phenomena, no doubt part of the re-normalization of carrying guns (saw my first open carrier at Wal-Mart yesterday, that's newly allowed in Missouri as of a year or so), and the graying of America (a large majority of the people taking my Missouri required concealed carry class were older sorts).
But if you're e.g. reading this from California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, etc. vs. the 43 states with shall issue or better concealed carry regiemes, you could easily know little to nothing about it.
It didn't strike me how common concealed carry was until a friend was giving me a ride in his Jag to pickup my car at the shop. I had to move his carry permit off the seat and it occurred to me that after knowing him for 15 years, he had never mentioned guns a single time.
You're right: most people simply don't mention it. In most of the US, guns are simply not a big deal.
Yeah I don't think the instructors for the CCW classes I've taken would be very happy with the "shucks I just forgot" explanation. I'm thinking of one instructor in particular (who is also a sheriff's deputy and family friend) who would have probably physically removed me from my chair for suggesting that kind of bullshit.
Carrying requires a different mindset, and that mindset doesn't admit the sort of forgetfulness under consideration here. That's the main reason why I usually don't carry.
WTF? Dude, if you can't account for your gun(s) at all times or be aware you are carrying one then you are not adult enough to have said guns. Period! End of discussion.
See, you fail to understand perspective. I know people with hundreds of guns that hunt all of the time. They keep them in their personal bags, coats, etc. Those are all safe places to leave guns when you have no children and don't share a home with people you don't trust.
You can't find any stats because the shampoo lobby has suppressed all shampoo death-related research...
A friend of mine tried to bring his gun through security. He had it in an outside pocket of his duffel bag and just forgot it was there. It's just another thing that you carry around with you. It seems lost on some people that these are deadly weapons and it may be good to treat them with a modicum of extra respect. It never occurs to my friend that someone could take his bag, discover the gun, and kill someone with it, even though he never would. That it could be a kid that shoots themselves or someone else in complete innocence. My friend is indeed absent-minded but I don't think that covers it fully. It is a certain mindset, and a fairly prevalent one especially in the South.
See, I wouldn't leave a gun in a bag, I'd always have it on my person. Someone can snatch or go through my bag, or my bag might not be nearby. I see that as kind of irresponsible handling.
Try to put yourself into the mindset of somebody who categorises their gun along with their wallet, phone, and pocket knife as items they routinely carry around all the time, rather than as something foreign and frightening.
You would have to be absent-minded, but perhaps not quite as absent minded as you might think.
I think "hyper aware" takes it a little too far; more aware than a reasonable person is of his wallet, certainly, but depending on how you carry it (ideally such that you're in essentially no danger of violating Rule 2), as long as it's sufficiently concealed that you're not in danger of someone snatching it, it should become a routine thing. A very safe routine thing if done right, but as Massad Ayoob comments in his great safety video that there is a danger of relaxing too far and treating it like "Fluffy".
I certainly put more awareness into my surroundings, which could be key to my using it successfully if needed.
In three years, the were two instances of two different security guards whom forgot they were carrying guns when they went to the airport. It happens so much.
Not only that but it is perfectly legal and not an exotic request to bring a gun with you when you fly, it just must be checked and locked up properly.
It must be unloaded, declared, and in a locked container.
The stat this article refers to is "catches", i.e. someone bearing a handgun without declaring it in this manner.
Any such error is troubling, but look at the stat in context: that's an average 7 occurrences out of an average of 2.2 million trips (emplanements) on an average DAY plus all the additional people who enter security to see people off and greet arrivals.
I lost a perfectly good very small, very dull Victornox pocket knife because I forgot it was in my pocket before going through security. The TSA agent was nearly orgasmic in her "find". Her rapture at discovering my WMD was more frustrating than actually losing it.
Funny, HN mods tend to correct headlines when it's not the same as the actual link's, but in this case they keep leaving it on like that. Is there any reason for the double-standards?
I'm late to see this, but the submitter chose to use the HTML doc title. Since it was neither misleading nor linkbaity, that was legit, so there was never any moderation issue here.
The article was posted in the middle of the night, US time. I imagine most people with any mod powers are asleep, and in any case it's hardly a wildly inappropriate submission title.
Did you even read the article? They are talking about cases where people are actually trying to hide the guns in their luggage which are on the rise. Sorry, the increase in found guns can't be explained merely by people "forgetting" them. Everyone should be MORE aware of what they are bring to the airport these days. Right?
Do you realize your reply has nothing to do with my comment? I don't believe most of these people were ever going to check their guns at the counter as in they are NOT "forgetting".
You can't extrapolate from the two facts of "2,653 firearms discovered by TSA" and "undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time" to an expectation that some ~63,500 total firearms were not detected because it is likely that many if not most of the firearm discoveries were not attempts to smuggle the firearm onto the flight. It is not especially uncommon for someone who routinely carries a weapon or other non-TSA-approved item in his or her purse or briefcase to forget to remove it when flying. I've done this twice with a Leatherman multi-tool (among its tools are a pocketknife blade that is obviously not TSA-approved) that I used to keep in my laptop bag. In areas where guns may be carried, this happens with guns. In these cases, the travelers had simply forgotten to remove the weapon or unapproved item and were not attempting to smuggle it onto the flight. When it's pretty clear that there was no intent to smuggle the item onto the flight, the traveler is generally asked to remove the item and there is typically no penalty. I was asked to return the Leatherman to my car or pay to have it Fedex'ed back to my house.
When you do it by accident, you're not exactly trying hard to conceal it. So, yes, they probably are really good at preventing this. The 96% statistic suggests that they are not good at preventing concealed, hidden weapons from slipping through...
You're right, of course, and that's why I said 'thousands' rather than doing the math assuming the least charitable interpretation (giving your 63.5k).
If the guns the TSA detects are carried accidentally, it seems that using x-ray or metal detectors to find them is overkill. Just ask 'please remove your laptop, liquids, and guns' before putting your bag through the x-ray.
There's a huge difference between someone trying to get a gun through security and some poor person who just accidentally forgot it was here. The latter would be way easier to detect than the former.
Of course it's the former that we really care about.
I don't care about terrorists, because that's fantastically rare.
I do care about the fucking idiots who carry a lethal weapon but forget that they're carrying a lethal weapon, because those are the people who are less likely to keep that weapon away from tiny children. (Roughly one shooting a week in 2015 by children under the age of 3 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...)
Aren't those numbers overwhelmingly related to someone leaving a gun in a drawer at home and a toddler finding it? What does this have to do with airport security? Do you think someone's going to accidentally bring a gun to an airplane and their toddler somehow manages to find it during the trip and shoot themselves?
I think their point is that if you forget about a gun when you are travelling on a plane then you are the sort of person who probably does not take a great deal of care of your weapons, i.e. knowing where it is at all times. It is these sort of guns that are found by children, not the ones stored in gun cabinets or in locked drawers.
Accidentally bringing a gun to an airport is symptomatic of a careless attitude to firearm ownership. It means that you're not absolutely certain of where your firearms are at any moment. Whilst this mindset may be socially and legally acceptable in many American states, it is a fundamental reason for the high rates of accidental shootings.
Here in the UK, a licensed firearm owner is strictly responsible for their firearms. Firearms may only be transported in a locked case, directly to and from their place of use. When kept at home, they must be stored in a police-approved safe. Accidentally bringing a firearm or ammunition to an airport would result in criminal charges and revocation of your license. Similar laws apply in most European countries.
I don't think its too contrived to imagine if someone forgets they have a loaded gun in their bag at the airport that they would also forget they have a loaded gun in their bag when they set it down in the hallway at home. Thus gun is not locked up and is in easy reach of children.
If you're the kind of idiot who forgets that you have a gun in your bag you're the kind of idiot that forgets to put it in out of the reach of children.
We want those people to be discovered, and reminded to keep their lethal weapon in a safe place and to remember at all times where their lethal weapon is.
Don't lash out at people you clearly don't understand. When storing a gun in a bag you don't leave it loaded and you certainly don't leave it loaded with the safety off. In many cases these even likely have a lock on them (I lock when transporting them).
>Don't lash out at people you clearly don't understand.
You're the one who doesn't understand.
The article says 83% of the guns found by TSA were loaded.
So perhaps we can concluded that the kind of person to absent-mindedly carry a gun in their carry on are the kind of people who also don't handle guns safely?
I know very little about gun safety (don't own them) so I claim ignorance in the topic.
I was addressing the GP who said "you don't understand people don't transport loaded guns in their bag" when the article specifically said "83% of guns found in carry on bags were loaded." Which means people are clearly doing it.
I don't know the specifics of the safety of such a practice but I took GPs word on the topic that said practice was unsafe (or inadvisable).
A properly manufactured and maintained gun of "modern design" (which includes, for example, the 1911 as in that was the year the US Army adopted it), if its control surfaces (safety, trigger) are secured by a proper holster or the like, is pretty much not going to fire as long as you keep it away from a fire or a MRI's very strong magnet.
Still, if your loaded gun is being discovered by the TSA in this fashion, you're violating Rule 2 of gun safety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper#Firearms_safety) and of course you might not know until it's too late that your gun has a manufacturing flaw, you screwed up maintaining it, and there are no doubt many old guns out there with marginal designs.
But finding careless gun owners has nothing to do with aircraft security. And anyways, the point is moot because the TSA probably has no problem finding guns that aren't intentionally concealed.
That the TSA has a problem with intentional concealment is unrelated to careless gun owners, and anyways, means estimates about apples missed given how some oranges were missed aren't accurate, nor are they useful.
That's very possible -- but it really doesn't change much, does it? A gun on its own isn't dangerous, a gun in the hand of a bad actor is. If bad actors (who, being motivated, must be assumed to have access to the same knowledge of weaknesses as the TSA) are getting ~96% of their guns through, it doesn't really matter that only 30%(no idea, just put a number<<96%) of neutral actors' guns do.
Compare pen-testing: You want the best possible hackers, with as much information as possible, to take a swing at your system - not a bumbling amateur, even if the amateur accurately models 99% of your regular users.
Or just that highly-experienced senior agents who've worked in many different locations and have "seen it all" know what to look for, but most agents are junior and don't.
I think what it means, relative to the OP claim, is that the TSA stepped up its game and is now reporting the guns it itself is trying to smuggle past itself as the subject guns that are being detected at airports.
If you know how the government works, that is the only plausible explanation.
My gf forgot to take out her pepper gas from her bag before flight. Her bag was scanned twice and no one noticed. We found it out at home. The can was opened, used once before. Well done security officers and billions dollar market for security scanners.
I flew from JFK to LAX to DEN with eight 9mm, hollow point rounds in my carry on bag. Denver TSA finally caught it and was very, very nice about it all (being white, having recently trimmed my beard, and having a non-foreign name definitely helped in that regard)
TSA at major airports is security theatre, plain and simple.
OTOH, on a trip to Alaska with multiple connections, my white, Irish-Norwegian descent wife was searched every time she went through security while I, her black husband, looked on with veiled amusement.
Not to deny the fact that profiling happens, but it occurred to me that the assumption your wife was carrying something for you might have also been at play. White women carrying narcotics is not an unheard of phenomenon. Sorry if that de-funs the situation!
I shave using an old-fashioned razor. From (not sure when, but most likely 2004) to 2010 I travelled with a pack of razor blades in my hand luggage most of the time. It sailed through dozens of inspections. I found it myself when I got a new laptop bag and emptied out the old one.
I was so angry about all the hassle (hours of queuing, dozens of examinations, all for zero success) that I decided to go on, and have done it another 100-200 times since. Whenever I fly somewhere without checked luggage but will want to shave, I just take along my razor and a blade or two. My blades have been found twice and confiscated once.
A tip for other security-minded travellers: There's a brand of toothpaste called "one drop only" whose tubes are small enough to pose no risk to aircraft security, yet last long enough that you don't need a tube for each trip.
My friend had toothpaste confiscated, because it's a liquid pack of more than 50ml... He was arguing for 20minutes that toothpaste is not a liquid and they let him go. I was allowed to take 75ml of honey.
I was flying out of Paris and had bought some good ripe camembert cheese. I was flying without checked baggage, so I put it into my carry on. The lady at the security scan insisted the cheese was liquid. After a lot of back-and-forth where I was not getting anywhere, I commented exasperated: "If I had a cheese sandwich though, you'd let me pass?" to which she replied "Yes."
I stepped out of line, bought a baguette, spread the cheese on it, and passed through security without any issues. I made sure to get into the line in which I would have to be checked by the same lady. She let me pass and avoided eye contact.
I've never been caught with my DE razor blades either. I intentionally bring them.
It's surprisingly easy to disguise them in a bag of electronics and wires. They actually get pissy about my small screwdriver set, but ignore my razor blades.
I once carried my actual knife (Schrade CH7) into the airport while traveling with my parents (pre 9/11), and I was allowed to take the knife on the plane, since the blade was "under 3 inches" (which it isn't).
As an explanatory back-story, I am not from the city. Carrying a knife is normal where I come from. I was less than 10 years old.
Heh, I once carried my late '70s manufacture Gerber Mark I boot knife (http://www.thegerberknives.com/mark.html see bottom) in carry on luggage in the mid-1980s, PEOPLExpress Airlines was in a hurry and didn't want to check baggage on that flight (very streamlined, e.g. you paid by cash or credit card during the flight). I showed it (sheathed) to the guy saying "Uhhh..." and I guess he thought correctly I wasn't going to be a problem and waved me on.
This might be a good time to point out that finding the weapon is an idiotic way to conduct security. What you want to find is the dangerous person
There are probably dozens if not hundreds of guns every day flying around the skies. Yet there is no danger. In fact, you could fill a plane with a fully armed Marine platoon, and there would be no increased danger.
The TSA collecting oddball trinkets and weapons and then reporting about them has always struck me as one of the weirder aspects of the war on terror. Since it's obvious that armed terrorists aren't being arrested at checkpoints, and since it's also obvious that the population has been traveling with these weapons for as long as there has been air travel, what, exactly are we proving? That people forget and leave scissors and knives in their carry-ons?
We are in the same spot here as we were with electronics just ten years ago. Everybody brought electronics on planes. Tons of people forgot to turn them off. We were given dire warnings about why turning them off was necessary. Yet planes kept taking off, flying, and landing safely. It wasn't that we were unsure whether or not these things were dangerous. Hell, we were conducting live experiments many times an hour that proved they were not.
Same goes for some business guy who left his pistol in his computer case. We already know these guys are not security risks. We've been testing it with real, live, people and weapons for many decades now.
TSA needs to be abolished. Immediately. Yes, we need flight security, but there are many drastically better ways of providing it.
ADD: Of the many things that concern me about the TSA is what we're seeing in this article. In order to continue justifying its existence, it will need more and more to make us afraid of our fellow travelers. This is the terrible consequence of 9-11: we're turning the Defense Industrial base against the very population it is supposed to be protecting. Very, very bad stuff.
So you're in favor then of psychological profiling and no fly lists? Because those certainly block people who the government "thinks" are dangerous, regardless of the actual danger posed by the items on their person.
> So you're in favor then of psychological profiling...
Reasonable people are in favor of police and intelligence work that identifies people with both the genuine motive and actual means to seriously endanger the lives and/or property of others and provides reasonable assurance that those people will fail to harm others. This sort of policing is nothing new and has worked spectacularly well for many, many, many decades.
So, if that's what you mean by "psychological profiling", then yes. If -however- you're referring to TSA's SPOT teams and similar low-to-no-effort quackery, then no.
And why would this be any more danger than of him using it while there?
Note that if declared, it's legal to transport unloaded in checked baggage in the US, and unless things have drastically changed the airline etc. isn't going to wonder if possession is legal for you at your destination.
Even if those 4% were mostly targeted searches, a lot of smuggling happens 'via' another country, to avoid containers (from, say, Colombia) from being targeted as suspect based on where they're from (or not directly). But yeah, good odds - 100% checks are impractical and even those will sometimes fail to find anything. The only real effect successfully finding smuggled wares has is that the wares will become more expensive, which will only make the suppliers want to smuggle more.
Port of Rotterdam doesn't randomly check containers. They have pretty good systems to determine if something strange is going on. You cannot just extrapolate the 4% if the distribution wasn't random.
>> Last year, undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time
The system for gun/bomb detection is only as good as the agents responsible for it. For example, I saw my friend accidentally sneak a knife onto an plane two years ago. The metal detector flagged him, and he confidently told the official present: "Oh, it's my belt!" and after taking it off he walked through, with no further probing. He literally forgot about his EDC knife and wound up with it on the flight. It must be noted that this was in South Africa, but having travelled to both the USA and Europe, I know it could have happened there too.
The current system is not robust to human error, and this is its fundamental flaw. Con artists and psychologists know how to systematically induce human error [1, 2]. It is conceivable that malicious actors (or TSA people pretending to be) can do exactly that and reliably subvert a human detection system. As an aside, it would be interesting to see TSA people try sneak weapons onto an El-Al flight [see 3, 4, 5 for why]. A humorous anecdote: once when returning from Israel, I had my bag full of dirty clothes thoroughly man-handled by an irate woman from El-Al security. I had two books inside, each with a metal inset in the spine. As soon as this was found out, I went from being treated like a terrorist to a non-threat in a few seconds. It was remarkably efficient.
What are the penalties associated with these 2,555 incidents? I assume it's not legal to smuggle a loaded gun onto a flight, and these numbers are staggeringly high.
The TSA will refer you to the local police. What happens next depends on the local laws. In some states you will be arrested (e.g., Massachusetts, where a law prohibits most people from carrying guns into three of the state's airports). In other states, forgetting to take a gun out of your bag is no different from forgetting to take a water bottle out, and you will be allowed to return the gun to your car before going through security again and boarding your flight (e.g., Georgia, which passed the Safe Carry Protection Act in 2014).
Ha ha! What an American comment! Not only having a gun, but driving your own car to the Airport. Americans love guns but hate public transport! Hilarious!
The majority of American airports are not serviced by trains. Public transport to an airport usually involves several bus transfers and at least an extra hour or more of travel time, on top of having to transport your luggage on and off each bus and hoping there is room for you and your items.
Americans don't hate public transport, it's just simply not available like it is in Europe. A lot of this stems historically from automotive manufacturers buying up streetcar companies and then dismantling them to force people to drive and also the antiquated rail infrastructure that gives preference to freight cargo over passenger trains.
Its weird. Public transportation to many airports in the US is surprisingly inconvenient. This isn't true for some airports but true for many.
Not everyone lives in a town with an airport so many people have to travel 100 miles or more to the nearest airport which may not be possible to do via public transportation if you live in the countryside.
I drive to London Heathrow airport because I hate hauling heavy cases on the Tube and long stay parking works out cheaper than the return journey by minicab.
I don't have a gun but I would be pretty inconvenienced if I had to go all the way back to my car from the security line (it's about 15 mins each way on the airport shuttle bus) so I'd be motivated to review my luggage before locking my car.
> Ha ha! What an American comment! Not only having a gun, but driving your own car to the Airport.
It's not an American-only thing. I live about 20 km from the local international airport. It's 1 hour 20 minutes by train (at daytime), 20 minutes by car. Also, there's less walking if I drive. Which one shall I take? Not a difficult decision.
For the most part, no one carries guns around. In the US, some 3%ish of the population has concealed carry permits. (In some states, permits are not required at all, but the overall percentage won't be hugely higher.)
5.2% as of last summer, and the numbers continue to skyrocket, I would bet at least 6% as of now, 5.2% represents a 15.4% increase in just one year. 7 states also have Constitutional Carry, no license required (Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Maine, Vermont (never banned carrying) and Wyoming (for residents)). Gun sales, both total and type, are reflecting this.
Since some very populous states, including #1 California and #4 New York are mostly no issue, the percentages are even greater in the 43 Shall Issue or better states, a number are getting up to 10%. The percentages are even greater when you adjust to the age eligible population.
So quite a bit higher than "no one", although of course having a licence does not equal routinely or always carrying.
It depends. It could be a warning, confiscation, a fine, or jail time, depending on whether or not officials believe there was no criminal intent, and, of course, whether they feel they need to make an example out of someone.
Personally, I think that forgetting you have a gun in your bag should qualify as criminal negligence at the very least.
Carry-on bag, right? Because having one in your checked luggage is - allowed. Not a crime. Just make sure its unloaded and have them tag it when you check your luggage. That's it.
I remember accidentally taking a massive pair of scissors onto three flights while travelling from NYC to SYD. Arrived in Sydney for an Australian domestic leg and they were immediately found. I was very confused as to how the TSA had missed them so many times.
give me a break, what a joke. typical gun-grabbing economist article. turns out in all the states they are harping on, a gun is considered a tool and not some black, metal object of death, like they want you to think.
and if i want to take a gun with me on a trip (where i'm legally licensed to carry, which is most states), i can already do that by checking it, like the majority of LAW ABIDING citizens do.
if there was actual INTENT to "smuggle" a gun on a plane, with which to do harm, then there's a news story here, but there isn't. it's liberal, gun grabbing, troll bait and an attack on legal firearms owners. move on.
You clearly are interested in reading their articles, so maybe you should think about paying. I've subscribed for at least 15 years and it's worth every penny.
Cute gag - the NRA would not "insist", and would not suggest "open carry" for tactical reasons either. To top it off, guns were allowed to be carried on board US airplanes till the 60s.
What are the odds that more than half of the passengers want to die in a terrorist strike?
So if we equipped all passengers with tasers, all terrorists would be caught. Of course, sometimes there might be some minor accidents, but they're not (very) lethal or harmful to the aircraft structure.
One change would result. You would have to pay the cabin attendants a lot more :) Also the safety instructions would take a while longer. They would show how to operate the taser in case your neighbor starts doing something suspicious.
Minor incidents? People would be letting their kids play with them and shoot other kids/people with them, police would have to meet every plane landing to arrest people for tasering the people behind them kicking their seat.
BTW if you let all passengers have them, you'd be arming terrorists, sooner or later - all they have to do is use it on a pilot going to the bathroom, if they are ready to die they don't need anyone to land the plane.
The parent comment's point is that the terrorists would be outnumbered. Incidentally, one of the planes involved in the 9/11 attack--the one meant to hit the White House, IIRC--was grounded by unarmed passengers who overwhelmed the terrorists who hijacked the plane.
Have you seen a pilot go to the bathroom? On us flights the flight attendants set up a barricade using a drink cart before the pilot comes out so you can't even get close to the bathroom without a major commotion.
You would have to have a taser license perhaps, and you'd get a discount when flying. Especially if there's a shortage of security people on a particular flight. Airports could have 20 minute courses while you're waiting for your delayed flight anyway. This is normal par for the course, one would just sell it as normal crowd sourcing / uberizing of cabin security. ;)
Is the actual headline. And it's one I find fault with. The mere presence of a gun in somebody's bag does not imply "smuggling".
As alien as it seems to us in the UK (and elsewhere), there are certain parts of the US where people think absolutely nothing of carrying a gun around with them all the time. I have little doubt that some percentage of these finds are just due to forgetfulness, and not to any malign intent.