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TSA Seizes Disney World Toys
8-year-old Jeremiah Ramirez had just lost his father to cancer, so his mom took him to Disney World to raise his spirits and take his mind of the tragedy. While there he picked up a Pirates of the Caribbean toy gun and sword, and was hoping to bring them back to North Carolina, that's when the TSA stepped in. When he tried to go through security at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport his toys were confiscated. "It's very upsetting because at one point I had told one of the employees, 'You know this is not a real weapon,' and he said 'Yes, I understand that, it doesn't matter,'" said mom Maria Edge. I may not be clear on all the reasons the terrorists hate us, but stuff like this is why I do.
We've got to hand it to the terrorists... They're good at what they do. They set out to affect our lives in a detrimental way, and we let them do it, doing their work for them most of the time, with "anti-terror" measures and "national security" legislation.
Penguins can be fascists too
Toy weapons were banned as carry-ons before 9/11.
Keep them in your checked luggage.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
How is this a story???? what these people are too lazy to check a bag!!! I hope the screener threw the fake knife in the garbage can in front of the kid.
Wheres the story? What these people were 2 cheap or lazy to check a bag??? I hope the screener threw the fake out in a garbage can in front of the kid.
Years ago, before 9/11, I heard this story. I don't know if it's true. But it is consistent with what I've come to expect from airport screeners...
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Seems this fellow was flying home bringing toys for his kids. Star wars action figures, to be precise. Airport security caused a fuss, and confiscated the guns from the action figures. We are talking a piece of plastic smaller than a dime here folks.
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Now this fellow was about to make a scene when he realized:
Yep, that's about what I've come to expect from our airport security...
What a load of BS, pretty much you leave all of your constitutional rights behind when you step into an airport and the usual answer is "If you don't like it, don't fly." That is very similar to the "if you don't like the president, then leave" arguments bandied about by the uber-conservatives. Lets just hope that fascism doesn't leak out of the airports and into other parts of our lives...
And sent the poor kid some replacements.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
It already has. Things may start to get better under Bush lite.
Well thats the itchy scab that never really goes away. Guess we will see you again in some future thread.
Someone's kid probably having a birthday.
Or did you check eBay to see if it was being sold there?
The people working for TSA are actually stupid ninjas. Ninjas 1, Pirates 0.
I went to Disneyworld in 1984 with my parents, where I got a Pirates of the Carribean toy pistol. I had it in my carry-on bag and was stopped at the gate. The toy had to be surrendered before I could board the plane. The TSA sucks and should be eliminated, but please, let's not pretend that this is unusual or new.
While the story is an obvious example of bad judgment, and as such is deplorable; from my experience it is the exception. For most of 2003 and 2004 I traveled to different destinations around the US almost every Sunday and came back almost every Friday. While I obviously never went to every airport in the country, I traveled through most the major ones. I had one instance at my home airport (DIA) where some ditzy woman asked me if I would like to take my shoes off when I was running late for a flight, and I thought she really meant it was optional so said 'no thanks, I go through all the time without a problem' and she pulled me out of line for the full wanding and laptop bag perusal. Other than that, I had no problems except a line or two, but I had worse lines waiting for boarding passes and rental cars. I always checked a bag, and all but once, it was on the carousel or whatnot by the time I got off the plane or very shortly thereafter (granted, I was usually coach or business class). The one time, I think I waited ten or fifteen minutes. My boss at the time had been traveling for years and said he'd never lost a bag, and had no major complaints about the TSA at that point, or when I talked to him subsequently. I think the 'airlines always lose bags' thing is a myth. The only thing that does bother me is my loss of freedom, but I'm much more concerned with warrantless wiretapping, data mining, and blatant attempts at politicizing the Justice Department.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
You left out 'yore.' I see that one about every other week.
The article says the toys were confiscated at security. That means the kid's toys weren't in his checked baggage.
So, the brat puts his carry-on bag--which contains things that look suspiciously like weapons--through the baggage screening x-ray machine, and now the dumbass mother is complaining about having the toys taken away? Everyone knows how careful TSA must be today, so she should have known better than to not put those toys into a checked bag.
TSA is doing its job. I'm not saying that it's right, but toy weapons have been illegal on planes for a LONG TIME now, even before 9/11.
I have a bad feeling about this...
Explosive decompression isn't explosive and a couple of bullet holes aren't going to cause a dangerous drop in cabin pressure.
OK, so explosive decompression, fat people being sucked out of tiny portholes, planes going into crash dives because of one bullet hole etc. is thoroughly mythbusted. However, it kinda missess the point.
Even on land, at sea level, 200' away from the nearest flammable substance, firing a gun inside a metal tube into which a hundred or so soft, squishy, potentially panicky people have been packed like sardines, with no way of getting out, in is a pretty stupid thing to do.
On a related note, I always wonder when I see security guards walking around crowded airports packing semi-autos, what would happen if they actually let rip with one? I'd rather not find out. Even if a ricochet didn't get you, the human stampede that would inevitably follow would be pretty messy. Of course, they could shout "duck" before firing - but practical upshot of that would be that the actual terrorist would hit the deck (or press the red button) while everybody else looked round to see what idiot was shouting about waterfowl...
Perhaps they're loaded with A-Team bullets (you know, the sort that cause every window, bottle or other fragile object in the vicinity to explode while no human gets so much as a scratch from flying glass, let alone a bullet hole).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
There were no security measures whatsoever, and no need for them.
Clearly, something has happened since then that has caused a bunch of people to want to kill Americans. They didn't in 1960, and they do now.
I can't imagine what it was.
I piss off bigots.
It was just much harder for them to come to the US and operate here.
Also, supporting anti-American terrorist groups has been a well-funded Soviet strategy since 1960s.
I saw a group of kids at the airport with these things, and I'm telling you, I wish somebody would have taken them away; what a nuisance.