TSA Has Record-Breaking Haul In 2014: Guns, Cannons, and Swords

An anonymous reader writes The TSA has gathered an impressive pile of confiscated weapons this year. In early November the agency had already discovered 1,855 firearms at checkpoints. In addition to guns, they've also collected machetes, hatchets, swords, giant scissors, brass knuckles, cannonballs, bear repellent and, this past October, an unloaded cannon. "Maybe someone has a lucky inert grenade they brought back from some war, or a nice cane was given to them and they forgot that the thing is actually a sword," said Jeff Price, author of Practical Aviation Security, "It's the people that are carrying stuff like chainsaws that make me wonder."

Comments

How many had intent to hijack?

[SlashDread]

zero.

Re:And how many were terrorists? Oh, right, zero.

[SydShamino]

Err, you know you are not only allowed to lock luggage containing a gun, but you are required to do so? It's spelled out explicitly in the rules.*

While it was a few years ago and the laws may have changed, I read somewhere that you should travel with a starter pistol. The TSA considers them guns, which means you are allowed (required) to securely lock your checked baggage, but (most) states don't consider them weapons, so you can travel with them to different states without multiple concealed carry permits.

* this is with a real lock, not a TSA lock

Re:Good job guys

[Trailer Trash]

That's because the next time it won't be with carpet knives.

No, it's because hijacking of airplanes ended on 9/11. Unless you can get more hijackers than passengers onto a plane (or at least enough hijackers to physically overpower the passengers) it can no longer work. It only worked before because passengers figured if they just went along all would end well and they would be - at worst - inconvenienced. That changed on 9/11/2001.

There have been people try to hijack planes since then. Here's one story:

http://news.investors.com/ibd-...

6 people tried to hijack a plane - 4 of them survived. I probably don't have to explain it but the other 4 didn't exactly "meet their objectives" if you know what I mean.

Here's a guy who actually had a gun on the plane - I think he was the one who's life was saved by the police who stormed the plane after it landed. He had boiling water thrown on him before the beating:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Again, he had two guns, it didn't matter.

Hijacking was ruined by Mohammed Atta and friends 13 years ago. Since then we had the shoe bomber (failed) and Smokey the Terrorist who set fire to his own penis (brilliant) before being subdued by the other passengers. Even on Flight 77 over Pennsylvania on 9/11/2001 the passengers found out what was going on, but the hijacker was able to ditch the plane before they breached the cabin door. The sap that they had left out to keep an eye on the passengers was burned with boiling water and beaten with a fire extinguisher - keep that in mind in case you have stupid hijacking friends and they want to lock you outside the cabin.