Make Sure the Airlines Don’t Lose Your Bags – Fly With a Gun

eddie — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:34:19 +0000

You read that right – if you want to make sure that an airline doesn’t lose your bags, or that TSA staff doesn’t steal things out of your bag, you should pack a gun in each bag that you check. It doesn’t even have to be a real gun – a simple, totally-legal-in-all-50-states starter pistol will do.

Boing Boing and security expert Bruce Schneier have more:

A “weapons” is defined as a rifle, shotgun, pistol, airgun, and STARTER PISTOL. Yes, starter pistols – those little guns that fire blanks at track and swim meets – are considered weapons…and do NOT have to be registered in any state in the United States.
I have a starter pistol for all my cases. All I have to do upon check-in is tell the airline ticket agent that I have a weapon to declare…I’m given a little card to sign, the card is put in the case, the case is given to a TSA official who takes my key and locks the case, and gives my key back to me.

That’s the procedure. The case is extra-tracked…TSA does not want to lose a weapons case. This reduces the chance of the case being lost to virtually zero.

It’s a great way to travel with camera gear…I’ve been doing this since Dec 2001 and have had no problems whatsoever.

What a great tip! I have personally had my bags lost 6 times, once with no recovery at all. In that case, I had to go through the arduous process of itemizing everything in my bag (from memory!), watching the airline depreciate the value of everything I owned, only to receive a check a full 2 months later that barely covered half of the replacement costs. Not to mention my out of pocket expense for being on a week-long trip with no clothing, no personal items, nada. Or the time and frustration it took me to get the matter sorted out.

I’ve also had a couple of items come up “missing” from my bags on other occasions. I’m not pointing any fingers here, but they were in there when I packed the bag, and they weren’t when I unpacked it. What *was* there in each instance was a little card notifying me that my bag had been searched. (OK, so I guess I am pointing fingers.) Screw you, TSA.

I’ll be sure to pick up a few starter pistols and pack them with each and every bag that I check.

Eddie On Everything » guns

Make Sure the Airlines Don’t Lose Your Bags – Fly With a Gun

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