I’m just now getting around to taking a good look at the TSA Week in Review from last week
Inert hand grenades, inert training detonators, knives hidden inside the lining of someone’s carry-on… it’s all getting to be so strangely familiar. The same goes for last week’s tally of loaded (25) and unloaded (4) guns.
It’s bad enough that we have to sit next to strange, smelly, arm rest-hogging people on airplanes. The thought that my seatmate might have a dagger or a gun in that greasy paper bag they’ve shoved down there underneath the seat in front of them just makes it worse.
Which is probably one the reasons I scour the weekly run-down of weapons and other items the TSA finds at airport checkpoints and lists – with photos – on the TSA blog.
No, the 13 people caught last week with stun guns and the 28 folks nabbed with loaded guns in their carry-on bags may not have been card-carrying terrorists, but they’re potentially dangerous just the same.
Among the items nabbed between June 1 to June 7, 2012 were: 22 guns (18 of them loaded), swords hidden inside a guitar case and a cane, a multi-tool knife hidden in a thermos, Co2 distraction grenades and an inert detonator (whatever those are).
Among the illegal and prohibited items discovered on people during body scans: a punching weapon, strike anywhere matches, drugs, drug paraphernalia and a half full bottle of whiskey.
“And while it isn’t prohibited,” TSA’s Blogger Bob Burns wrote on the TSA Blog, “a passenger wearing a chastity belt alarmed the body scanner at one of our checkpoints. I’m sure you can imagine where an undergarment such as this might be a problem at a security checkpoint. Especially if there is no key.”
What did I tell you? Mysterious, scary and downright entertaining….
Once again, the TSA’s Friday round-up of prohibited, illegal and just plain wacky items found at airport checkpoints and in checked baggage is both entertaining and frightening.
On the list: something called a debrainer, inert shells from land mines, model rocket engines, automobile airbags marked “Explosive,” guns, stun guns, ammunition and knives.
And here’s a handy chart of ‘just’ the guns discovered in carry-on baggage at airports last week. The TSA says a lot of people “just forget” they have loaded guns in a purse or briefcase they take with them to the airport. Maybe I travel in far too innocent circles, but I find this hard to believe.
Each Friday on msnbc.com’s Overhead Bin, I track down an answer to a reader’s question. This week the topic was: guns, knives and grenades at the airport checkpoint.
Throwing knives found in a carry-on at BWI
Should you pack your gun, your grenade or your carving knife in a carry-on bag when you go to the airport?
Definitely not, but apparently a number of people do.
And that number doesn’t include the countless knives that still show up at airport security checkpoints daily — it’s so many that the TSA doesn’t even keep count — or the many inert grenades that passengers try to take home as souvenirs.
Last week, for example, a passenger at the Orlando International Airport showed up with three pistols — a .25-caliber, a .40-caliber semiautomatic and a .357-caliber revolver — in a bag that also contained loose ammunition and a loaded magazine. In Baltimore, the TSA recently found three throwing knives in the carry-on bag of a Mexico-bound traveler. And on Monday, TSA officers at New York’s Albany International Airport discovered a loaded gun in the purse of a woman heading to Detroit.
The two passengers with guns were arrested; the traveler with the knives was cited, and his weapons were confiscated.
It’s unlikely that passengers plan to use their weapons during flight, but it’s difficult to know for sure since people often respond to TSA questioning by saying, “I forgot that it was in my bag.”
Given how frequently illicit weapons are discovered, Overhead Bin asked TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein for advice on the proper way to fly with firearms.
Farbstein said fliers may transport firearms, ammunition and firearm parts in their checked baggage even though those items are prohibited from carry-on baggage.
“Basically, travelers must declare all firearms, ammunition, and parts to the airline during the ticket counter check-in process,” Farbstein said. “The firearm must be unloaded and it must be in a hard-sided container [and] the container must be locked.”
You can read more about traveling on airplanes with guns, firearms, knives and other weapons on the TSA’s website, but Farbstein adds that “airlines may have additional requirements for traveling with firearms and ammunition. Therefore, travelers should also contact the airline regarding firearm and ammunition carriage policies.”
Or maybe, just plan to leave your weapons at home.
