Flying in the US? Remember to leave your hand grenades at home It will not come as explosive news to most sensible travellers, but US airline passengers have been warned to leave their grenades at home when getting on a flight. The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has issued a stern warning to anyone thinking of bringing their favourite handheld bomb on holiday. In a blog …
You can carry guns/ammunition in checked baggage but not a joke "take a number" sign shaped like a grenade?
In fact it's become standard practice among film-makers and photographers to pack a gun with heir expensive equipment and declare it - so that it gets special treatment, instead of being stolen by the baggage handlers or TSA.
Houston airport has a huge steel bar surrounded special luggage room just for lugagge with guns
In fact it's become standard practice among film-makers and photographers to pack a gun with heir expensive equipment and declare it - so that it gets special treatment, instead of being stolen by the baggage handlers or TSA.
Now that's the best argument I've heard for carrying a gun. Probably not worth the hassle for standard checked luggage though.
M7 bayonet, check
M67 fragmentation grenade, check
M84 stun grenade, check
M11 pistol, check
P11 underwater pistol, check
M16A4, check
M590 shotgun, check
M72/A2, check
M19 mine, check
Please proceed to the boarding gate and thank you for flying American..............
The M1A1 Abrams will have to go in the hold Sir, enjoy your flight.
Indeed, it is exactly this kind of goverment overreach that is strangling the airlines to death. You never known who might be onboard with you and with all these bullshit rules you just can't be safe without weapons. We bought our own plane three years ago. It's just a turboprop but is fitted out very nicely. My pilot doesn't care what I bring on board. I'd suggest you look into a similar arrangement for yourself.
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I brought all of my SCSI cables (old and new) in hand-luggage in 2004 or so and the people at security didn't know what to make of them. Computer equipment, I said. I had to take them out of my suitcase because it was already too heavy. It must have looked very impressive on the x-ray machine.
Still, they let me through and I am thankful for that.
"I brought all of my SCSI cables (old and new) in hand-luggage in 2004"
I did something like that in 1996 coming back from a conference in Anchorage. At Anchorage I transferred my (company) laptop from my carry-on bag to my briefcase to make it easier to get at, but left the rest of the case and accessories in the other bag. (This was a time when you could bring a bag AND a briefcase on a flight...)
So I got to Seattle to change onto the flight to London, and the X-ray guy there asked to look in my bag because he could see what looked like coils of wire... Oh (Finnish words). I told (and showed) him what was what (power adapter and its cables for the laptop, duh), and he was suddenly much happier. We had a brief laugh about it and off I went.
Or when my dad went through Shannon in southern Ireland during the 1980s, and had to tell the security guy that yes he had coils of wire and a crimping tool...
Ha. You joke........but
Several years ago I read a report from a passenger who smelt petrol. He traced it to the overhead locker where there was a leaking chainsaw.
Apparently the chainsaw had been seen by the security personnel, but had been waved through because a chainsaw was not on the banned list!
Meanwhile, last month my 10 cm (2 mm head) nail punch got a 1-way ticket to the trashcan. When asked, the bagcheck drone told me "it's metal, Mr". The thing costs 3 bucks so I did not pursue the matter further than pointing out that any one of the 5 pens in the same bag were more likely to be used as an improvised weapon (to which he just replied "yes, but this one is metal"... d'uh, so's my 15 cm aluminum-body mech pencil). If I was in the disposition to try and hijack a plane with my nailpunch, I'd just go and get a glass bottle of anything at the duty-free shop and use that instead. Or I could steal cutlery in any of the post-checkpoint restaurants. Whatev's.
They must appear to serve a purpose, so they pick stuff at semi-random and trash it; at some point lighters were a no-no, but they must have faced enraged smokers so now lighters are OK. I can't really blame the guys, they serve no purpose other than blunting the unemployment stats, if they did not discard some thing or other from time to time to make people feel like they're protected, they would kill themselves. Of course they pick preferably cheap-looking stuff, so as not to cause lengthy heated arguments with the victim. Over the years I've never had anything of significant value discarded by them. A lot of cheap stuff, but nothing even remotely dangerous, mind. Nail clippers, that kind of stuff.
I always found these restrictions crazy, they limit what you can take on, but the problem is you can buy a hell of a lot of things after getting past security, so if you really wanted a weapon of some kind on the plane there are plenty of resources to make one...
I may be paranoid, but that does not mean they are not out to get me.....
What makes you think the soldier was white? That is a very racist comment, many non whites serve in the military so there is no need to think they were!
Skin colour has nothing to do with profiling... its all about cultures, past travel and if you look shifty..
That is why customs officers are so good at their job, they watch body language to find the people smuggling..
I can't tell if you are trolling or not? Whilst at college, those who studied Law, or something, went America and all brown-skinned men were randomly selected for the security checks. So either skin colour has something to do with profiling, or all middle-eastern looking people look shifty,
...its all about cultures...
Wait, wouldn't that be offensive?
But, of course, you are trolling, right?
Hand grenades are extraordinarily stable devices. There is no reasonable chance of accidental detonation and certainly the soldier knew this or would never have put it in his bag in the first place. Hell, you can shoot the things and they won't explode and they are stored and shipped in crates at the munitions plant with nothing but cardboard 'egg carton' padding inside for protection.
Agree totally. I am convinced that there is no chance for a hand grenade to go off unexpectedly under any circumstances that can happen in a place.
If the reverse were true, you'd have no troop transports containing soldiers with hand grenades. Given the number of men that have been transported in full battle equipment over the years, if hand grenades had a tendancy to go off after a sudden jolt, I think we'd know about it.
How do you make a mistake and pack a grenade for a flight...?
The make-a-mistake part was in quotes, which should give you a hint. There are rooms set aside in most major airports in the US for military personnel on travel. All that I have been in have amnesty boxes where such things can be gotten rid of, no questions asked. Keep in mind that many soldiers are quite young and apt to do foolish things when left to their own devices. They are sent to areas where activities such buying an AK-47 at an open air market are commonplace. They end up with trophies because they are cool. The mistake this soldier made was in not taking advantage of the amnesty box (and in getting caught as a follow-on). I am not going to comment on why that might have happened...
They're talking about not carrying grenades, I'm OK with that. Yes, the TSA checklist does mention "no explosives" and stiff fines if you do try to sneak 'em aboard. (Though there's a good chance you'd be given the Menezes treatment if the grenade's on your carry-on!)
But replicas? Shouldn't those show up as plastic and definitely not carrying explosive material? Really?
> But replicas? Shouldn't those show
> up as plastic and definitely not
> carrying explosive material?
Not necessarily. Most replica grenades are actually honest-to-god metal body grenades.
They are typically old training versions, and have a 1/2 inch hole drilled through them, filler removed (natch), and the fuze replaced with a inert version.
We have an M67 version in our office. It has a "Blame" tag attached to the pin. We give it to the person who breaks the build...
It is designed for use against infantry as well as light armor.
Meaning it is big enough to cause significant damage to a lightly armored vehicle or semi/improvised hardened position but not so big that it violates the "overkill" provisions of warfare conventions for use against Humans.
This happened to a friend of mine about six months after 9/11, when everyone was still very jumpy.
He had a real grenade that had been rendered inert he kept on his desk as a souvenir from his time in Desert Storm. He was still in the National Guard at the time and thus had a military ID.
Unbeknownst to him, the night before an early morning flight, his son took the grenade off his desk and ended up putting it in his carry on bag he'd packed and set next to his desk. He went through security, they saw it on the Xray, and immediately hustled him into a room for further questioning. Fortunately for him the TSA guy was a former Desert Storm vet himself, could see the grenade was no longer operational, and bought his story, so he still made his flight on time. The grenade was confiscated, however (somehow I bet the TSA guy ended up taking it home)
Obviously he wouldn't have deliberately packed a grenade, live or otherwise, but sometimes strange things happen when you have kids. I'll bet he checks the contents of his carry on before leaving to this day :)
Right there is where you run afoul of the questions and regs at check-in. One of the questions they ask is whether or not you packed your bag and whether or not it has been under your control since you packed it. In this case the truthful answer is 'No' even though he thought it was. Yes, it is a hyper-legal point; but it's what they'll nail you on if you fight them. No, I don't like it any more than the rest of you do. I'd rather we did away with the theater show and had real security.
Just who legally has access to live grenades? It's pretty much one of four types of people: police, military, criminals or a specially licensed person such as a manufacturer. Grenades are classed as "destructive devices" in 26 USC § 5845 and it isn't exactly legal for the average Joe to pick one up at Wally-World.
The toys, lighters and inert replicas aren't grenades and is just the TSA whinging because the screener was embarrassed over peeing their pants and/or it caused a big hullabaloo in the terminal delaying other people from moving on and perhaps missing flights. IMO the TSA is perfectly right in complaining about it and people dumb enough to be carrying fake grenades should be pulled aside and questioned about whether they are intellectually capable of boarding an airplane for about 24 hours.
All that said, considering there were roughly 180 million air travelers, 83 grenades carried by 83 or, more likely, fewer people, the blog is little more than poking fun at that witless few.
Tom, are you referring to the 1968 decision of Haynes v. United States? If so, then you might have mixed up the effect of the decision; it affected felons who had to register firearms under the old National Firearms Act of 1934, not felons who carried weapons. As a result of that decision, Congress replaced the 1934 Act with the National Firearms Act of 1968 (which exempted felons from registration, to remove the self-incrimination issue) and the Gun Control Act of 1968 (under which felons can be charged for the possession of firearms).
If you’re referring to a different Supreme Court case, I’d be curious to learn its name.
Either way, there’s nothing constitutional about excluding felons (or anyone else) from Fifth Amendment protections.
Grenades are around. Troops bring ammunition home all the time, especially National Guard troops where they don't have to fly to or from their armory. Guard troops are also the number one source of tracer rounds. There are controls on explodey stuff, but there's just so much of it everywhere it is impossible to maintain accurate inventories or prevent it from walking off.
In the big cash for guns roundups out west this year people brought live grenades, live mortar shells, at least one live tank round and two shoulder fired rockets.
I have never forgotten seeing a LAW on the wall in the firearms section of the main Gart Bros store in Denver back in 91 or 92. Apparently it was considered a hunting weapon.
"Look ... a moose"
BOOM
<holds up shreds>
"Got em."
As for the rest, I recall flying back from Japan in 94 or 96 with a carry on bag full of interesting items.
On being stopped by the scanner, he opens my bag, pulls out several throwing stars, a folding knife, a polycarbonate knife allegedly designed not to show up on xrays, a set of brass knuckles, several thousand BB rounds and a few other similar things my military obsessed homestay had given as mementos. He then pulls out my old all metal pentax SLR & lens boxes, looks them over, and puts everything back in and I board the flight.
Apparently all that simply indicated "teenage male" and was classed as harmless fun in the days of airport sanity. Still have most of them lying in drawers back at the family home I think.
In 1999, leaving Seattle in late November, I remember seeing a bunch of dodgy-looking people stepping off the little subway train on their way into the exit of the airport while I was boarding the same train to get to the terminal. One young lady was very clearly carrying a (probably dummy) metal grenade, and she had just stepped off an airplane. I suppose she was one of the WTO protesters gathering for the "battle in Seattle."
What stuck in my mind was that she had apparently been allowed to carry this on an airplane.
Interestingly, on my way from Japan to the US in about 1990, I had nearly had an iron bell (more a windchime) confiscated because it was about the same size and color as a grenade. I had to beg the security guy to let me keep my souvenir.
These reports are more proof of just how many idiots get on planes. Despite these grenade reports and literally thousands of guns that are found and removed yearly - many of them fully loaded, we still have aresholes whining over TSA security checks. How damn stupid can people be? You'd think a simple airport security check was some big ordeal, when in fact it's not much at all.
I travel around Europe and to the U.S. also and I find all of the complaints about the TSA to be a bunch of B.S. in my opinion. It's a bunch of braindead people who evidently prefer to be completely dead as opposed to just their current state of braindead?
Damn government. What part of "bear arms" didn't they understand? If I can't carry it with me, that's not "bearing arms". The terrorists have won I tell you!
Oh, wait, I actually think the American 2nd (4th? not sure) amendment is a pile of mis-applied wank that's been misinterpreted to benefit firearm manufacturers, nothing else. Until I (or my historical re-enactor friends in that region) can carry a sword and be covered by the same rules (they can't, they aren't), then "arms" is a joke, and the whole thing is a scam. Nevermind then. Carry On (TSA). Keep groping!
Where can you not carry a sword in the US? You might draw some attention and get asked what you're up to but I don't know where they'd prevent you (maybe in California).
The same rules apply to swords as they do to open carry firearms. In a lot of places open firearms carry is perfectly legal. It is only when you want to carry concealed that you need a permit.
You could read here: http://www.handgunlaw.us/documents/USKnife.pdf (amongst others)
or here: (I can't get to the original any more. DNS issue maybe? I don't know.)"
http://web.archive.org/web/20130808034321/http://thefiringline.com/library/blades/knifelaws.html
Looking at that, looks like what are called "knife laws" are still a bloody mess in the USA. Want to carry a sword (what I would generally define as 50cm+ of sharpened steel) in public? Good luck figuring out the local limitations! I know of (only?) one instance (where I personally know the people involved, there may be others) where carrying the sword in a scabbard justified a charge of "concealed" (by the scabbard). Sigh.
disclaimer: I last researched this 6 years ago, although the above links seems to have been kept up-to-date for various definitions of such. Laws may have changed since. Probably not very much since the NRA has traditionally been the bitch of firearm manufacturers, not really interested in "rights" so much as "money", and in the USA weapons laws don't change much without the money from some lobby pushing hard.
Usually, these sort of stories get "released" in response to some embarassing incident that puts the TSA in a bad light. I seem to remember reading about grenades in luggage sometime last year too.
Anyone know what sort of idiocy the security theatre has been up to recently?
I just though I'd remind people of that.
And on a lighter note.
Don't carry grenades on a plane, OK? Especially through Newark, as otherwise these people might come and sit on you.
Yes, but not all of the subsequent close calls were. And the relevant factor on 9/11 is that they were all cross-country flights with the planes taken over on take off. The point being to have the most fuel available for destruction when it crashed. Which mean international flights are other prime targets.
Now, having said all of that, I think 9/11 was pretty much a one trick pony. Up until 9/11 we were all told and trained to obey the hijackers and chances were good we'd all come out alive. And being good little monkeys we all played along. As of 9/11 we now all know those rules don't apply anymore. Which means from hear on out, when you stand up to announce the hijacking the immediate response is going to be a plane full of pissed off people intent on taking you down no matter what. And that is what pisses me off the most about the Kabuki theater of airport security.
"travel through Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv."
I did that back in 97. It was a weird experience. Going *into* Israel (from London) was easy (aside from the bonus metal detector pat-down at the gate), but getting out was more amusing. I had listened carefully to my colleagues' advice - I didn't look like a backpacker or anything like that because one of them had done that and had had a four hour grilling.
I had a letter in Hebrew from the local office that allegedly described what I had been doing there, and I was able to describe the little bit of sightseeing I had done the night before - a trip down the coast to see the old port at Jaffa. The guy looked at the letter, chuckled, and then set it aside. He seemed generally bored with my situation and let me go.
I wish I could find the open letter written by a pilot to his in-house newsletter thanking the security personnel who, with the minimum of discretion, held him up at the barrier and confiscated his bottle of Tabasco sauce.
Despite pointing out the fact that the sauce was the only thing that made the inflight meal edible, that he had access to a fire axe within the cabin, and that pilots are generally the first at the scene of an accident, rules were rules.
Seemingly doesn't apply to the VIPs who arrive at the accidents slightly later though...
http://www.cntraveler.com/daily-traveler/2012/08/hillary-clinton-interview-visionaries
There was also an old link to the story you reference (Tabasco getting confiscated at Glasgow Airport), but the link is dead.
...these folks should test a real grenade in their pocket at home before leaving on a plane? Pull the pin and place it in your pocket. Then go jogging around the hood and see how long it takes for the grenade to trigger. If the first one misfires, do a second one. The time is important so please make sure to record exactly when the grenade explodes in your pocket. This will help future grenade designs.
My company now allocates 10% equipment loss/breakage per trip due to inept (and sometimes larcenous) inspection and repacking by TSA baggage screeners. The sad thing is that they keep wasting everyone's time and money checking and re-checking the same bags, same equipment, same travelers that they should already know are reliable. Just how long is this going to go on before U.S. taxpayers smarten up and start allocating their security dollars more wisely?
"Just how long is this going to go on before U.S. taxpayers smarten up and start allocating their security dollars more wisely?"
Simple.
Never.
It keeps the assorted dead beats of the Thieves Support Administration busy, employment high amongst unskilled people and inconveniences no one of importance*
*IE Politicians, their assorted advisers, assistants, staffers, high class call girls etc as Regan National has a very efficient processing system for them.
A) I seriously doubt the soldier accidentally packed the grenade, he probably wanted a nice souvenir. The slap on the wrist is still fine as far as I'm concerned.
B) Saying you can't bring a fake grenade USB stick or whatever is stupid. So, with an XRay machine if something vaguely looks like a grenade, but (since you can see the insides) obviously is not one, you still must pretend it is? This is the supidest thing I've ever heard of and is true security theater.
The only thing I've ever had confiscated by airport security was the Kensington cable lock for my laptop. The woman said that it could be used to strangle someone. (I resisted the urge to point out that my shoe laces would be equally good but I didn't want to spend the rest of the journey without them.)
Somewhat ironic that a security device should be confiscated in the name of security.
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