If there’s one thing more terrifying than the prospect of snakes on a plane, it’s unrestrained flatulence. I don’t think we really need to elaborate, do we? OK then. Maybe that’s why, as The Telegraph reports, Ireland’s equivalent of our TSA snagged little Leo Fitzpatrick’s fart gun before he could board a plane this week from Dublin to Nottingham. Imagine the chaos that might have ensued had the little tyke been unable to maintain adequate Rule 3 discipline at 30,000 feet, where a negligent discharge (or seven) could have been catastrophic. So to the eagle-eyed security staff on duty at Dublin Airport, well done, lads. Well done.
Maybe they’re afraid of a GAS attack…
I hate the world we live in
I hate the morons in it that do this crap.
They might have been afraid that it was a loudspeaker device and he’d use it to tell everyone all of the places they’d been touching him during ‘security’..
It’s the UK. None of them had ever seen a real gun before so they had to confiscate it just in case.
They’ve done much worse in the U.S.
Perhaps they can’t distinguish the smell of gun-powder from bananas either.
In all fairness it did have a sort of blunderbus look to it.
“Silent, but deadly”
Oh no, my butt is an unregistered silencer!
Scenario:
Your sitting in you seat at 30K, and all of a sudden you hear a loud fart behind you. There’s nowhere to go, so you half to just hunker down in your seat, and hope the smell is not as bad as noise.
Those air vents above your seat can be used to redirect the flow in case of ’emergency’. I had that tactic used against me once on a more memorable flight.
So if fart blasters aren’t allowed on airplanes, will a ban on Taco Bell locations inside airports be coming up?
I’ll just see myself to the door.
I don’t have to carry a toy fart blaster on board. I’ve got the real thing. Completely undetectable by airport security.
Oh, and yes, it costs more than you make in a month. 😉
Tell that to the drug dogs….
Only if I set it off in the security line!
Better hope those TSA boys don’t start doing cavity searches!
Those that live in the UK must be so proud to see their tax dollars being used so effectively. OK, maybe plane ticket surcharges. But effectively the same thing for those that fly.
Pansies.
My favorite part of this story is securities claim to be consistently applying the rules prohibiting “REPLICA firearms”. LOL!
The government employees detected a Minion and had to disarm him, after all with Kevin on board mayhem could ensue!
By this logic, no one can transport a megaphone, similarly shaped and sporting a “trigger.”
FAA regulations require every passenger aircraft be equipped with a megaphone. Ban them…its for the children! Look at that baby! If it saves just one life!
Imagine what they might have done if he’d pointed his fingers in the shape of a gun.
“I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of a little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a fart blaster. Who can trust such creatures?”
— Cicero (50 BCE)
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
— Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1849)
At least the airport said they would hold onto it so that they could pick it up when they returned. That’s probably about all they could do. It seems like the staff were very sympathetic, but they are hampered by rules that don’t allow for exigent circumstances. Sounds like staff could have lost their jobs if they hadn’t done what they did. Blame the idiots that thought up the rules.
I’m glad we broke away from the English.
I’m sad the statists have been pushing us back (in terms of policy) since 1861.
‘I’m glad we broke away from the English”
No shit!!
Of course it wasn’t in the UK at all …..
It was in Ireland which is a different country. Ireland has been an independent country since 1921
Yes. This is a really embarrassing error.
Dan, whatever point you’re trying to make is lost when you don’t get basic info right.
I was wondering when someone would figure out that Dublin is not part of the UK.
2nd biggest gun recovery op in the UK?
Well-played!
Because “it looks like a trigger”.
I have hand soap in a dispenser where the button looks like a trigger. My new spray bottle of window cleaner has what is obviously a trigger. My soldering gun has what is obviously a trigger. My outdoor grill came with a lighter that has what looks like a trigger. Frak, my nephew has a candy dispenser with what looks like a trigger!
Brits should protest this by filling their luggage with innocent items that have triggers or buttons that look like triggers.
I, for one, commend the security forces for their devotion to the rules. Who needs a drunken Irishman on a plane with a fart blaster?
A fart gun… My inner child just woke up. I gotta get me one of those!
My wife say’s I would never need one, too much of the real thing!
Tom you can get them online, got mine at wal Mart for $19.95!! Lots of fun in a restaurant!!!
“Yes I’d like the(insert fart noise) chili cheese fries and onion rings please”!!!
Submit to my authoritah! – eric cartman
The stupid is strong with these people.
I’m happier with them confiscating that stupid thing than the nail clippers and other stuff that wouldn’t annoy a cabin full of passengers at 30,000…
Here’s one I haven’t seen anywhere else: I play the harmonica and I keep one tucked away in my briefcase in a pocket that you wouldn’t see if you didn’t know it was there. Once I got pulled out of the TSA line and delayed for like 15 minutes and they wouldn’t tell me why. When they finally cleared me they said that what turned out to be the harmonica looked like a .22 pistol magazine on x-ray and it took them a long time to find it. I doubt they had ever actually seen a real .22 pistol magazine on x-ray or they would have known they look nothing like a harmonica!
So I work for the Canadian equivalent of the TSA and I’ll give my input here.
Our rules for toy guns is that they don’t pass if they look real. So like blue water pistols that look like a ray gun from a campy SciFi movie are good. This would pass here. It doesn’t even remotely resemble a real gun obviously.
As for harmonicas, they only look suspicious if you’re a noob at the xray. If you’re familiar with the images they look nothing like magazines. Like literally it’s only because they’re rectangular and so are mags, sort of.