According to the Transportation Security Administration’s blog, the Agency’s blue-shirted goons confiscated 2,212 firearms last year. Why, that’s six firearms per day! One every four hours! Dallas Ft. Worth Airport led the pack in terms of packed heat, with 120 absent-minded gun owners surrendering their piece to the TSA’s wall art project. Strangely, the TSA’s blog says nothing about how many of these now-ballistically-bereft travelers were arrested under anti-terrorism statutes. (I’m thinking none.) Nor does it mention the Delta employee who flew more than 150 guns from Atlanta to New York. Wonder why that is. [h/t DD]
Can I buy them? Not the art…
Then don’t carry your gun or leave it in a bag. It goes way beyond absentminded.
This.
Not being allowed to carry aboard a commercial flight isn’t a new policy, or even a post-9/11 one. If you weren’t aware of the law, what rock were you living under and how did you find a pistol there? Even worse is “Oh, I forgot I had it on me.” Dude, if you are that unaware of your weapon, should you really be carrying?
While I’d love to be able to carry on board, I understand the reasoning for not being able to, and at least they follow through and make an effort to actually screen everybody, and have SOMEBODY armed. Not my preferred arrangement, but I can deal (grudgingly) with a gun-free zone if they acknowledge that by denying me the ability to defend myself, then SOMEBODY better pick up the slack.
I’m more annoyed by “no pocketknives.” I was all psyched for us to mirror Europe’s standard on that (allowing non-locking blades under 3 inches), but TSA chickened out.
Yeppers
Too bad you can’t just mail your pistol home to yourself like you should be able to if you forget.
Says who? As long as you don’t mark the box with a super-conspicuous “THIS PACKAGE CONTAINS A FIREARM”, what’s stopping you? Better to run the (extremely minuscule) risk of shipping an arbitrarily prohibited item than to surrender it to the TSA and risk some crazy terrorism charges.
there won’t be terrorism charges. it’s up to the local cops to charge you, and that’s not common unless you’re an a-hole or have violence priors.
But if you ship a gun in the usps surreptitiously, you’ll likely lose the gun, be fined, and if you’re an a-hole or have relevant priors, be federally charged.
How would USPS know what’s in the package?
Another statistic that these TSA goofs don’t report is how many guns get stolen out of properly checked baggage. It does happen. The theft reports get filed at the location that the discovery occurs. Had it happen to a friend flying from Tallahassee to Utah 2 years ago. Pistol gone when he got to Salt Lake City. He had to fill out the report there, but it likely disappeared at Tally or Atlanta.
juliesa says:
February 1, 2015 at 21:37
How would USPS know what’s in the package?
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Uhhh…Induction loop, X-ray, good ol’ fashioned opening it? They do this all the time. Not worth risking it.
So can any of these people file to get their firearms back? I would hate to loose a firearm to the tsa permanently.
It’s “lose”, not loose. Loose is the opposite of tight. More to the point, I highly doubt it. The TSA is one of the main goon-squads of the government. If there even is a mechanism for that, I’m sure it’s deliberately underfunded/ignored.
Typo sorry. However if it was my firearm I would do everything (short of spending more money than it would cost to replace it) to get it back. I would not want my property being part of any government agency’s wall art.
Guns that TSA seizes are labeled “illegal.” Normally you will not get them back, unless you can prove you can legally carry the gun on your person onto the aircraft, and even then, you will have to go back and proceed through the procedures to make that happen.
And if there are this many guns “out there” in peoples’ bags, it’s hard to believe we aren’t dying left and right from the gunfights!
I never see it addressed that people carry day in and day out without issue.
Honestly, I suspect a bunch of guns are missed for one reason or another and no issues result. Planes aren’t falling out of the sky.
Security theatre… looking for the wrong things.
IIRC, you can mail (fedex) your own gun to yourself in another state. The problem is the lack of fedex at the airport ticketing area.
I was in Australia last summer and apparently, my cigar cutter was a problem in my carry on. Fortunately, they were able to recall my checked bag and I could put it in there instead of throwing it away. That would be nice if the TSA allowed that to occur
WoW
What I found most interesting about the TSA website is not the fact that a few too many absent minded people left a gun in there bag in gun friendly states (DFW is my stomping ground), but check out some of the other items collected around the country. Hand grenades, c-4, Avalanche control device, stun grenades, smoke grenades, flash bangs, etc… and none listed from Texas.
I wonder what ever happened to Shemane Nugent. She got popped for that about a year ago.
This is the same TSA that made me check a kubaton keychain as a deadly weapon. However carried a loaded Sig 229 .40 on board escorting a prisoner. I had a permit for the pistol but not the keychain. Gotta love the Feds. Take it back to privatized security like the Marshalls Service & SSA has done at some offices. Everyone is better vetted than TSA.
That is hilarious. “here is your pistol sir” “what about my keychain?” “sorry, you dont have a permit for that”
And so sad at the same time.
You have to keep in mind this is the same agency that won’t let you carry a full bottle of water through security because it could be dangerous so we are going to throw it in the rubbish bin because it’s not like it is dangerous or anything.
8 Billion Tax Dollars a year to keep you feeling safe while flying. A deal at twice the price! Or so they try and claim.
Well, I was about to ask how much this silliness was costing, is that an accurate figure or a guess? Seems kinda low to me, maybe some fudging. I mean, 24/7 at every airport, metal detectors and high school dropouts, tax dollars and retirement systems.
Follow this link to the PDF of the budget for DHS:
http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY15BIB.pdf
TSA accounts for about 12% of the 60 billion budget, about 7 and something billion dollars. It gets rounded up to 8 billion because there are a lot of things the TSA does that come from the DHS budget and not the TSA budget directly.
Even if you go with a strict interpretation of the numbers it works out to $3,200 per firearm found last year. It would be cheaper if the TSA bought a million small handguns and gave one to each passenger for the duration of the flight. Pick up a pistol after you check in, drop it off when you reach your destination. And it would probably do more for security than anything they do now. It would certainly be safer than the current shoe-carnival or magic zippy bags for your tiny little bottles of liquids.
“Nor does it mention the Delta employee who flew 150 guns from Atlanta to NY.”
Write the TSA and ask them. Be sure to cc a copy of the letter to multiple officials.
I think someone with money to waste should stick a tracker inside the grip of a revolver, get it confiscated, and watch what happens to it.. guaranteed it will end up in either mexico, or syria.