man arrested for attempting to board plane with gun + ammo

[woodsong]

Anyone else feel that the original headline ("Trying to Board Plane with Gun") was misleading? It suggests that the person had already passed through the security check and was trying to board the plane.

[jimlongley]

Anyone else feel that the original headline ("Trying to Board Plane with Gun") was misleading? It suggests that the person had already passed through the security check and was trying to board the plane.

Why else would he be going through security?

The way I see it, from my admittedly biased point of view, and although he's innocent until proven guilty, he's already done a pretty good job of convincing me that he's guilty. Many times I have seen the airport police decide that someone with a gun in a bag had made an honest mistake, with varying results. I have seen people allowed to go out and check the bag, I have seen the police (NOT TSA) confiscate the gun and let the person go, and I have seen the person leave the airport in the back of a fancy car with lights all over it, wearing a new set of silver bracelets.

I have seen people who I believed had honestly forgotten, or even didn't know the gun was there at all. My wife carried one of my former carry on bags on our trip to Hawaii, with one of my old SOG Flash knives in it.

One of the funniest incidents involved some golfing buddies that had come to some sort of tournament in the Dallas area. They checked in at curbside and the skycap tagged their bags and ran them over to the x-ray. While x-raying, we determined that there was a gun in one of the bags, and checking with the skycaps, who were not supposed to accept declared guns, they confirmed that no guns had been declared.

The passenger was called back from the plane and showed both the gun and the x-ray, and he almost collapsed. He made the weirdest keening sound and headed for the deck, and his friend held him up. And then it was discovered that it wasn't even his bag, the skycap had tagged his friend's bag as his and vice versa, and the gun was really his friend's, and the friend claimed he forgot it was there. He said he played regularly on a course near Houston where there had been some bad thing happening, so he had started carrying his gun in his bag. No CHL, he thought CHL was only for carry on the body, and he claimed the gun had been there for so long he had forgotten it. A lot of good it would have done him, zipped in a locked compartment with one of those dinky little padlocks. He was eventually allowed to fly, but not before DPD made him go get a box to lock the gun in and declare it properly.

Interesting, for all of Love Field's incorrect signage, they never arrested him, but he was issued tickets, I don't know what for.

[Beiruty]

A good lawyer, could question how many travelers with handgun was let go and how many were arrested, he would claim that his client was treated unfairly. Not defending the guy, but all citizens should be treated equally, no?

[woodsong]

Anyone else feel that the original headline ("Trying to Board Plane with Gun") was misleading? It suggests that the person had already passed through the security check and was trying to board the plane.

Why else would he be going through security?

Not the point -- if he was trying to board the plane, then he had already gone through security who had failed to catch him. Besides, I can think of a lot of thing a person with bad intentions could do with a weapon after passing security without ever getting on a plane.

That didn't happen (which is what the headline implies). Security did catch the fellow when they were supposed to (I'm not a big fan of TSA, but they did their job this time).

Sticky point is that it's not against the law to have a weapon at a security checkpoint -- it's against the law to "intentionally" have a weapon at a security checkpoint. The common "I didn't realize it was there" is a valid defense usually -- in this case, they're trying to use some recent receipts to disprove this. I don't think that will work -- if you can forget there's a gun in your case, you can also forget that you purchased (whatever -- ammo, perhaps? Story didn't say.) and forgot it was in the case as well.