As I write this, I’m flying about 31,000 feet over Texas (and boy are my arms tired). I’m on an AirTrans flight first to Atlanta, then on to Charlotte, for the NRA confab. Here’s some bitter irony for you: like every other traveler, I’m completely, utterly disarmed on the flight. No tactical knife. No tactical flashlight. Not even so much as fingernail clippers. (Don’t tell the TSA that I’m trained to be able to disarm/maim an attacker with a standard rollerball pen.)
The ironies continue when I will (eventually) get to Charlotte. Carrying any kind of firearm is expressly forbidden in the Charlotte Convention Center; they’ve got the magnetometers to make sure you don’t try to sneak something in. Pause with me for a nanosecond, whilst we consider the bitter irony of a convention celebrating everything in the way of firearms, where nobody can go in locked and loaded. “Wayne, we’d like to go to Charlotte, what with the NASCAR thing and all. But their convention center won’t allow people to carry firearms.” “NASCAR? Frankly, Charlotte, I don’t give a damn.”
