Yeah - as others pointed out, perfectly legal to check in an unloaded firearm in a locked case. I just saw on another forum a guy bumped into Jerry Miculek at the airport who of course had a large locked case with him.
So the guy must have been either really stupid, or wasn’t supposed to be in possession of a firearm (ie felon).
What I want to know is - WTF is that large disk in the middle supposed to be? Police Frisbee?
This does remind me of the last time I tried to fly with paintball equipment and the idiot at the counter wouldn’t let me fly with EMPTY compressed air tanks. He’s like, “This is what brought down that Value Jet.”
“No, those were FULL of flammable oxygen. These are EMPTY. If they were full they would be full of nitrogen.”
Ended up having to Fed Ex them to a friend. They started giving me HAZMAT forms until i made it clear they were EMPTY and then they were like, “Just put it in a box.”
These weren’t oxygen cylinders, but chemical oxygen generators. Way more unpleasant when they go off, as they release not only oxygen but also copious amount of heat.
I can’t fully imagine the mindset of the genius with this plan… because I can’t imagine myself not removing the toy gun and replacing it… shoving a second one in there? No, replace the existing one yah nimrod!
Yeah, nobody is trying to argue that this fine fellow is a shining example of intelligence though…
Also, though they caught this one, I’m betting that there are a lot of similarly disguised things that get through undetected. That is, if the items that people actually admit having accidentally flown with (and having had gotten through security) are any indication.
As I understand it, it’s not the multiples of wrongness so much as it’s the “Am I bored enough to continue exercising my authority” that might cause an airport worker to let a passenger off the proverbial hook.
