Traveling With a Weapon

Yesterday, on my way home, I went through security at Virginia's Charlottesville airport. One of the TSA guys searched my Swiss Army backpack (a contraption that has as many pockets and velcro loops and zippers and compartments as you might expect from that brand), and pulled out what was conceivably the catch of the day: an X-Acto knife, which some people call a box cutter.

I blanched. The knife was indubitably mine: I recognized it from yards away by the piece of tape that kept the poorly constructed tool from falling apart. No idea what it was doing in my backpack, though. Apparently, my absent-mindedness is sometimes more worrisome than I allow myself to admit.

To the security officer's credit, he didn't make a big deal of it. Instead of having me hauled away in handcuffs to the plaintive pleading of my wife and the soul-piercing cries of my two poor children (one imagines), he asked me politely if I wanted to go back out and put the knife in my car. I declined, saying it was fine if he just threw it away, along with the illegal item that my wife had unthinkingly stashed in her carry-on luggage — a half-empty, six-ounce bottle of baby shampoo.

Thus relieved of a couple of supposedly high-risk but definitely low-value belongings, we proceeded to the gate, while I reminisced on the effectiveness of TSA personnel. Especially this tidbit: That utility knife had been in my backpack at least since the beginning of our trip, eight days earlier, through two domestic flights, wholly undetected.

Fits the pattern, of course.

Comments

[Reader]

Your second link contains another Walter Murphy example:

"The TSA flaunts its power to bar people from flights. A group of 20 high school students and Catholic priests and nuns, members of Peace Action Milwaukee, were detained at Milwaukee's airport on April 19, 2002, after some of their names turned up on a "No Fly Watch List" issued by the federal government. According to one member of the group, a sheriff's deputy told her, 'You're probably being stopped because you are a peace group and you're protesting against your country.'"

[colson]

It's almost a game. If you ever fly to vegas, swing by a smoking lounge and look at all the people with lighters. They are pretty good about taking them at the gates but you have to wonder why it's so damn easy to get a light (with a lighter) from another travel weary person.

I almost make it a game. I usually take my ipod or another device and pack a ton of metallic shit on top a lighter or two. They usually get one or so but I usually am able to smuggle one through.

When I was in the Philippines a couple years ago, a buddy carried a four inch diving knife in his carry on bag not aware that it was there the whole time. It went through security in Omaha, Chicago and Tokyo without any fuss being made at all.

I just hate the TSA agents that have to make it a big deal... you know "pursuant to blah blah blah, all blah blah blah are banned..."

My girlfriend just got back from chicago and we were talking about how bad the TSA is, we figured out that with all of the delays with added security and Chicago's notorious air traffic delays, you can drive from omaha to chicago in about the same about of time it will take you to fly - that's about a 6.5 hour drive.

Arrive at airport early: 2 hours
Flight time: 1:10
Time to deplane and collect any checked luggage: .5-1 hour
Rental car or buying tickets for the El: 10min - 45 minutes.
Travel time to downtown: 20min - 1 hour

At the rate we're going, it will be faster to walk than fly.
Time to get to destination 20 minutes - 1 hour.

[sistergeoff]

Given that I work at an airport I refrain from toying with the TSA as that could put my employment in jepoardy I have however come up with what I consider to be the perfect way to confound them, a frozen water bottle. There is infact no ban on water, just liquids, freaze it and its no longer liquid and in theory can pass by the check point however that kind of higher order thinking I am sure would escape the room tempature IQs staffing the check points. Let the games begin...

[Fawkes]

Colson,
The smoking lounges at McCarran in Vegas have been shut down.
For your protection, of course...