Both of these happened long before 9/11 and the TSA, and one wasn’t all that serious.
Long before I flew regularly, when I was in fact living a life in the High Plains very much like the one I have now except I was younger and studlier and regularly employed, I had to take a (series of) flight(s) to my hometown of Detroit for some personal business. I actually checked in at the airline desk and was heading for the security line when it finally occurred to me that nobody was going to smile and nod at my holstered 1911. Then as now I often forgot I had it with me.
(This got longer than intended…)
So I went back to my car, took off the holster, unloaded the gun, stuck gun, holster and magazines in a rug and put the rug in my (soft-sided) suitcase. Then I checked the suitcase and went through security.
That would have been good enough except that in order to get north to Detroit I had to fly south to Dallas and change not only planes but airports. Things got complicated. I landed at … that other airport that isn’t DFW. Love Field? Got my bag, got on a bus, went to DFW, and found that for some reason the security line was at the terminal door. Which meant both I and my 1911 were going through security.
Like a good citizen who didn’t want to get mobbed by bored security guys, I told them about the gun before the bag went on the X-ray conveyor. This was Dallas in the early eighties; nobody got upset. In fact there would have been no problem at all if it had been a hard-side suitcase. But there was a rule against guns in soft-side cases, and so there I was.
Turns out they even had a fix for that – in theory. This was Texas: Legally or illegally, it was not unheard of for guys to carry guns. Some guy told me that the airport would “rent” me a hard-shell pistol case at an absurdly inflated price just barely preferable to abandoning the gun or turning my ass around and going back to the Panhandle. I instantly opted for the case.
Much time passed, and as I began to worry about missing my flight somebody showed up with a hard-shell rifle case. “Sorry, we’re out of pistol cases.” Needless to say, whenever they “rented” one of these cases they never ever got it back. In fact I still own this one…
…so it wasn’t a total loss.
Except that that personal business I mentioned was meeting my fiancé’s very religious and rather pacifistic parents – so that got things off to a great start. And spent the next two decades going downhill. Ah, youth.
It was at about that same time in my life when I bought a folding knife from a MAC Tools truck, and I’ve still got that, too…
Schrade LB7. Nice knife.
Over the years the Schrade has kind of gone in and out of style with me. It has spent years at a time stuck in a drawer, and I used to regularly lose track of it. Back when I was a much-employed technical training developer I went through a period where I spent a lot of time on airplanes. For some reason, at one point in this period I dropped the holstered knife into a pocket of the LL Bean briefcase I carried on trips and forgot all about it. Hey, I was busy.
I was reminded of it by an airport security guy, who found it in that briefcase pocket. “Oh! That’s where that went,” I said lamely. He looked me over, gave me a dirty look, and dropped it back in the briefcase without saying anything.
All this was, of course, long before TSA.
I should also point out that none of the airplanes containing these deadly weapons was ever hijacked. Careless of me.
It all comes to mind this morning as I read this…
A sign of just how awful the Bush years were going to be was in the response to this craven attempt by the Left to exploit the death of Americans. Instead of fighting they proposed an even bigger government agency. We not only got the Transportation Safety Administration, we got the staggering monstrosity called the Department of Homeland Security. Fifteen years later, our airports are grinding to a halt because TSA can’t perform its one job, which is to molest people before they enter the terminal.
I couldn’t fly on an airliner now if I wanted to, because I no longer possess a Government-Issued Photo ID.
But that’s okay. I no longer want to. 🙂
“A sign of just how awful the Bush years were going to be was in the response to this craven attempt by the Left to exploit the death of Americans. Instead of fighting they proposed an even bigger government agency. We not only got the Transportation Safety Administration, we got the staggering monstrosity called the Department of Homeland Security. ”
So the Department of Homeland Security isn’t really a product of the Bush Administration? I think there is some fractured history being manufactured here! My blood ran cold when I first heard Bush’s intent to create the DHS, and in 15 years I haven’t yet warmed up to the idea. Since then, we can’t take airline flights without dealing with our very own home-grown blue-gloved Gestapo, and frankly I’m surprised and gratified that they haven’t (yet) wrapped their sticky tentacles around other forms of travel.
I remember the DHS coming whole-cloth from the Bush administration in the days following 9-11. (The two minutes of extensive research I just did seem to confirm that.) The first Director of the Office of Homeland Security was appointed to the White House staff only 11 days after 9-11. The legal creation of the DHS took longer. This Presidential document outlines the concept. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/book_0.pdf
Despite the above, I don’t remember the left fighting the idea, nor has the Obama administration done anything to dial it back. So the left certainly deserves its share of the blame.
The linked writer doesn’t dispute your impression of events, Ben. He’s certainly not excusing Bush.
The last time I flew, in the summer of 2000, after I had been at my destination for a week or so I was digging through my jacket pocket and found a .22 cartridge. It had gone through “security” unnoticed (although, what could I have done with that?).
This was after spending days trying to figure out how I could get my carry gun there with me- which I gave up on since even calling the airport/airlines and asking the question seemed terroristic to those on the other end of the phone. They just kept transferring me to the next person who was even more flustered that I was asking how to get my gun on a plane. That month without my carry gun was the longest I’ve ever been without one- I don’t care to repeat the experience.
The hoops that are mandatory for getting on a plane to the States are enough of a pain that I will not travel by air to the US. This stance of mine really bugs my wife but the line has to be drawn somewhere. From my experience in security all I will say is that the bad guys are winning because of all this security theater.
Carried a standard mid-sized Swiss Army folder all over the place all through the 90’s. Buses, trains, airports, Then gov buildings all got all security conscious and it just cascaded from there. My solution was just not to go to them places any more unless absolutely necessary.
I travelled all over the US and Canada for six months in ’95 and ’96 while carrying a Leatherman PST II.
Only time anybody said anything was in Honolulu airport on the way home – a female security person asked if she could see the contents of the leather pouch on my hip.
My first thought was “there goes my PST” – the result was “OK, that blade is less than three inches, it’s fine to carry on the plane. Have a nice flight.”