Undeclared Guns In Carryon Luggage Have Tripled Since Last Year

Forget heck, that’s just downright stupid. Car keys with penknife attached, pocket knife, nail clippers and other normal pocket items, that’s forgot, guns just plain stupid.

Wow! That is an expensive damn mistake.

Makes me wonder how many get through

I want to know about the repeat offenders.

Let's assume for a second that they're telling the truth the first time, that someone else packed their luggage.

You would have to be an absolute idiot to ever let anyone pack your luggage again.

This is a little off topic but I'm telling this story as an illustration. I use a company car at work. I'm required to account for the gas credit card at the beginning of my shift and at the end of my shift.

So I came to work one night and I asked the guy that I was relieving is the gas card in the glove box? He tells me it is. I open up the glove box to check and it's not.

I come to work the next night and essentially the same thing happens except for before I open the glove box I asked him if he had physically verified that the card was in there. He told me he had and I opened the glove box and no card. I think it happened twice more before I quit bothering to ask him and just checked the glove box for myself.

So common sense would dictate that the second or maybe the third time the guy got caught short like that he would either

1. Actually check for the card.

Or

2. Just tell me he didn't know.


The point I'm trying to make is that guy is the kind of idiot that gets caught with a gun in his carry on luggage twice.

I am a bit ignorant of laws related to flying. Is the whole issue here that it was carry-on instead of checked baggage? I know they have to be in locked containers without ammunition.

Gun owners who forget they packed their gun or had someone else pack their gun into their bag are not just forgetful, stupid, deceitful, or all three. They are the personification of an irresponsible gun owner. How many of us forget where our gun is one let others control the whereabouts of our gun? Not many, if any. Fifteen put of a million air travelers is not many, but still too many. It raises the question @HB asked and we cannot answer.

Makes me wonder how many get through?

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HB said:

Makes me wonder how many get through

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I routinely hear and read reports of airport screeners failing tests where somebody makes it all the way onto the plane with what is clearly a fake bomb.

Having said that I put my class A uniform in carry-on luggage going from Charlotte NC to Germany and they made me open the case to show them that the belt buckle hanging in the middle of the suit was in fact a belt buckle

the risk is lower than the reward. things will change when the risk goes up.

murf

I don’t fly with luggage I have kept firearms or ammunition in.

I did have a friend that had never flown in his life but was going to fly out of State to meet his daughters future in laws.

His wife packed his bag but didn’t remove the 38 from it loaded with two rat shot and 4 solids. They found it at the x-ray machine at the airport. He didn’t get to fly that day and was “banned” from that airport but didn’t get arrested or anything and got his pistol back shortly after.

Lots of new gun owners who don't know the rules is my guess. Those same people who thought you could buy a gun on the internet with no FFL involved, get a machine gun for $100, etc have now run out and bought things without really thinking.

WestKentucky said:

I know they have to be in locked containers without ammunition.

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Not true.

I'll throw out a guess. Two things I would look at to account for the increase:

• Many travelers haven't been on a plane in a while, and are just now getting back to it. In the meantime, gun buying and (ostensibly) gun carrying have gone up due to civil unrest. It could be that more guns have been put into bags, then forgotten there, then carried to the airport, than occurred last year.

• I would guess that most of those traveling right now are less afraid of the virus. I would also guess that being less afraid of the virus is correlated with conservative views, including gun ownership. So, more if more travelers are gun owners right now the odds would favor an increase in firearms found in luggage.

Trunk Monkey said:

I routinely hear and read reports of airport screeners failing tests where somebody makes it all the way onto the plane with what is clearly a fake bomb.

Having said that I put my class A uniform in carry-on luggage going from Charlotte NC to Germany and they made me open the case to show them that the belt buckle hanging in the middle of the suit was in fact a belt buckle

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Some of the studies I've seen show they miss up to 80% of items during these tests.

Of course with the smaller numbers of flyers right now they aren't as rushed either.

Texas10mm said:

Some of the studies I've seen show they miss up to 80% of items during these tests.

Of course with the smaller numbers of flyers right now they aren't as rushed either.

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It's all security theater

Texas10mm said:

Some of the studies I've seen show they miss up to 80% of items during these tests.

Of course with the smaller numbers of flyers right now they aren't as rushed either.

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I have a friend who is a commercial pilot with one of the major airlines and they get weekly emails of the things that TSA intentionally try to get through security that were not caught. You would be surprised to find out just what they routinely miss. For instance according to these emails a firearm of some type will normally make it through at least a couple times each month and these are routinely not small easily concealable guns but full size handguns and even long guns.

Psychology shows us how forgetful people are. Some of the best shooters in the world have had an ND. So it's fun to be preachy, your turn might come someday.

That being said, I went to Louisvile and visited the Louisville slugger plant. They sell a small version as a souvenir. They have a big sign that you cannot have this in your carry on. At the airport, before you get to TSA, there is a big sign saying you can't carry on the tiny bat. By the inspection station, there was a barrel full of those bats.

Look at all the inattentive car accidents. I'm still suffering from one of them where I got smashed by said type of driver. It's human psychology and pointing out that someonr is an example of an irresponsible gun owner is whipping the Hellespont. What else is new?

For a couple of years wife and I flew two round trips a year to Florida and back, roughly at three month intervals. As a habitual pocket knife carrier who also carries a small leatherman tool on his key ring It took a couple of sized Items before I remembered to transfers those items to checked luggage. Habits are hard to break.

Perhaps the greatly reduced number of travelers is resulting in more thorough sceenings?

Either 5 or 15 incidents (of guns being found in carryon baggage) per million passengers are statistically insignificant. Frankly I'm surprised that the number is that low. The takeaway (confirmed by the consensus here in this thread) is that guns on planes are a serious matter, and that practically everybody is complying with the rules.

Last time I flew, they made me get out of a wheel chair, go through the X Ray machine because hand held wand detected metal. They then made me take off my suspenders because of the metal clips. Should have let my pants fall down, but didn't.
Turns out it was the metal in my freshly replaced knee.
No more of that flyin' BS for me.

A couple of years after 9/11 and the formation of TSA, I was going through the security line with my carryon stuff on the x-ray conveyor belt at the Austin airport. The screener who was looking at my camcorder case asked me, “what kind of laptop is that?”.

After we shutdown the engines at the gate in late 2001, in MCI (Kansas City), one of our flt. attendants found a .32 round in an overhead bin. Maybe its just a pure coincidence that Ft. Leavenworth is not far away, along with both the civilian and military prisons there?
The MCI airport's young security lady --with hardly a word spoken-- calmly showed us the round and took it somewhere inside the terminal.

Luckily cockpit doors had already been strengthened in order to allow airlines to again Operate (at all) after the mass terrorism, with special communication required inflight simply to have the hardened doors opened by a flt. attendant.

Doors were then replaced with entirely different, "Phase Two" doors and coded panels nearby. Those doors must have been designed by "Makarov".

Texas10mm said:

Some of the studies I've seen show they miss up to 80% of items during these tests.

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I've seen similar reports since the 1980s... actually, I seem to remember up to 90% so maybe it's gotten better? It was a 20/20 special during the hijacking days.