TexasCHLforum.com

"Airport spokesman David Magana confirmed that the DFW Airport Department of Public Safety took Shemane Ann Nugent, 51, into custody, and “the rest of it is working its way through our system of legal approval.”"

So DPS conducted the arrest, as I thought, not TSA.

The Annoyed Man wrote:

EEllis wrote:Can we all agree that taking, or attempting to take, a firearm thru security or checking baggage containing firearms without proper declarations is illegal currently? Then what she did was illegal. Now she most likely has reasons and explanations but I don't see that letting her tell it to the court rather than having the airport cop make the call as inherently evil.

Yeah, it's illegal. But cops make decisions like that all the time, based on their boots on the ground judgement. Easy example: it's illegal to exceed the speed limit. The cop can give you a ticket, but many will issue a warning, depending on their appraisal of the individual they have pulled over. In California, it is illegal to be carrying a loaded gun in the car, not secured in a locked container, but lots of people (I did it when I lived there) will keep a gun under the front seat for "just in case." I've had more than one California LEO tell me when I asked them what they would do if they found a concealed gun in the car of someone like me, and I was told "I'd not only let you go, I'd probably put the gun back where I found it." Granted, carrying a firearm past TSA security is a much more significant offense than a traffic ticket, but it is not any worse than getting caught with an illegally concealed firearm in California. One can still exercise good judgement..........Lord knows they show poor judgement all the time when they frisk 6 year old paralytic girls.

And by the way, I'm not suggesting that Ms Nugent should have been either ignored, or allowed to proceed with the gun onto the airplane. But I AM suggesting that when they run her record and find that she doesn't have one, that she does possess a CHL which would explain how a gun might be forgotten in a carry on bag, they might well have A) escorted her back to her car and locked it up, or B) confiscated the gun and sent her on her way; or some other variation of that.

But if it makes you happier to see her in court, I guess you're going to be happy then.

First of all, TSA is not allowed to exercise any sort of judgement, everyone is to be treated equally, from young paralytics to elderly Alzheimers patients, and I wouldn't put it past terrorists who have tried to light their underwear to try to sneak a bomb aboard through one of those avenues, so it is not totally without reason.

That said, in the three plus years I spent with TSA I saw lots of people who "forgot it was in there" and would love to know that ultimate outcome of each case. Part of the reason is that TSA, as has been pointed out here when I objected to people bashing them, and me when I was a TSA "officer," is not "law enforcement" so when they catch someone with "illegal items" in their bags, they get turned over to the local police, and it is then up to the local police whether to arrest or not. I have seen an older gentleman break down in tears as the LEOs led him off in handcuffs and stuffed him in a squad car, and I have seen a mother with three kids in tow kept in local detention (the airport police station) until someone came to pick up her kids, and then she was whisked away too. OTOH, I have seen similar (to me virtually identical) circumstances where the person was braceletted and escorted into the police office, and five minutes later they were walking their bag out to the car to leave the gun there. I don't know what the difference was, but I can tell you that in every case the decision was made by LEOs, not TSA.

TSA can, and does, file charges at a Federal level, which would be separate from any local charges.

I would also pay to remember that the rules are different for carry ons and checked bags. TSA is screening checked bags for IEDs, not guns, pot, meth, or anything else. A TSA officer running checked bags through the machines is supposed to ignore guns unless they are occluding some part of the bag that might contain an explosive threat. Do TSA officers routinely "threat" bags that only have guns in them, unfortunately yes, and partly because some of them are flat out anti-gun nuts, but that is not supposed to happen. In airports where people who have declared firearms are accorded special treatment and escorted to a special screening area, then TSA knows that they are screening a bag with a gun, but in airports where that bag is simply put on the conveyor with all the others, there is no way for the TSA officer to know if a gun has been declared or not, and unless there is a suspected threat in the bag, that bag gets passed along with all the others.

And TSA is not, according to their rules, supposed to treat bags with declared guns any differently than any other bag, no matter where it is in the system, even if it's just being taken to a special screening point, because anyone with a lick of sense now knows that that bag contains a gun (or swords, knives, other stuff) and it could be targeted for thievery or worse. But TSA also gets to play outside its own sandbox because no one has put them back in it.

The Annoyed Man wrote:

philip964 wrote:Why was she arrested. I thought they were just releasing people for this. Or is that just Houston. They can't prove intent.

It's because it happened in (democrat-dominated) Houston, she's Uncle Ted's wife......and he's {{{GASP!!!}}} a voice of the {{{SHUDDER}}} eeeevil NRA........whose name shall not be spoken.

Pure politics. If she had been the husband of Annise Parker, all of this would have been quietly swept under the rug.

When did they move DFW airport to Houston?

This, though, is one of those examples of "off the body carry" being less than optimal. Too easy to forget the gun is there, and if you forget it's there while going through airport security, what chance is there that you will forget it's there under other circumstances?

OTOH, when I was with TSA I made it through DFW checkpoints 7 times out of 10 tries with a .380 handgun in my carry on.