Airport security and FORGOTTEN items!!

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patron1974

New member
Well Monday morning im going thru security to board a flight out of Houston Hobby and the guard tells me she has to search my carry on bag that just went thru the x- ray scanner. So i said sure. Well she searches and sure enough she pulls out my long lost "LOADED" 9MM 1911 magazine. Well she wasnt happy and neither were the 2 HPDO's that came to do some talking. Well in the end all was cleared up and i was even allowed to take my prohibited item back to my truck and board my flight. Took a little time but was glad i got it back being a factory mag and all . So have any of you had any similar experiences??
 
I flew (post 9/11) with some shotgun shells in my carry on, when I noticed unpacking I took em out, didn't want to temp fate on the return trip. Now I have designated gun bags for range and hunting trips etc.
 
I've had it happen. I had a loaded 9mm Beretta mag in my laptop case. I think I was flying home from the Memphis airport. I had been all over the hotel room and rental car, and finally just figured I must have have only brought the 2 mags.

Mag 3 fell out on the floor as I was unloading the laptops out in the gray bins at security. I showed it to the TSA guy and he just advised me to tape up the ammunition in the mag and check the bag.
 
I hate to admit this, but I used to work as airport security (that was a while ago, I personally can't stand what they're doing to people now...but that's another story for another day). The airport I worked at was one with a large percentage of hunters and other gun enthusiasts. Basically, even a single round of ammunition means paperwork, and possibly getting a LEO involved. For those that had magazines found in their bag, you're lucky the guy working there didn't classify it as a gun part, or you could have potentially been in for a relatively hefty fine.

The advice I always gave was don't use your hunting/range bag as a travel bag. If you're going to travel with your hunting/range bag, either THOROUGHLY search through it and make sure there's not even a single loose round, or just check it. Loose ammo in a checked bag, though still not allowed (it has to be properly packaged) has the potential for getting you in a lot less trouble, lol.
 
If I had a dollar for each time someone told me they thoroughly checked their bag for loose ammo and other prohibited items as I showed them the loose round of ammo (or in about 10% of cases a full box of ammo) I'd have been able to retire from the TSA after only about a year.

Of course they could have been lying. There was also that family that liked to prank each other by putting live ammo in each other's bags (what a great family!). You'd be surprised where a round of ammo can wedge itself. They can be nearly impossible to find without the help of an X-Ray machine. Which is why I always recommended getting different bags for travel or range/hunting, or at least check (as in, checked luggage) your range/hunting bag.
 
Just a note...

Please don't turn this into a general screed against either airport screeners or the general security situation as it now exists.

Posts in General Discussion MUST be firearms related.

Deviations will result in posts being removed and possible action taken against the poster.

Thank you.
 
Gaerek said:
If I had a dollar for each time someone told me they thoroughly checked their bag for loose ammo and other prohibited items as I showed them the loose round of ammo (or in about 10% of cases a full box of ammo) I'd have been able to retire from the TSA after only about a year.

Of course they could have been lying. There was also that family that liked to prank each other by putting live ammo in each other's bags (what a great family!). You'd be surprised where a round of ammo can wedge itself. They can be nearly impossible to find without the help of an X-Ray machine. Which is why I always recommended getting different bags for travel or range/hunting, or at least check (as in, checked luggage) your range/hunting bag.
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Having also done the job, I concur with everything said here. I can't count the number of times I found something in somebodies bag and heard "Oh my God! I've been looking for that for 2 years!"

Also concur that the OP should be glad that the officers on duty were the "right" ones for his situation. As he describes it is how it was handled at the airport I worked, which is to say basic common sense, but I can assure anyone reading this that such an outcome is the exception, not the rule.
 
I was running for a flight in Las Vegas, after attending SHOT Show, and knew I had a souvenir pen, or something, that looked very convincingly like a .30-06 round. If we were detained at all by security we'd miss the flight, so I dug out the "cartridge" and threw it in the trash. My buddy had one in his bag too, and nothing was said about it when we passed through security. I'm the "just my luck" type, so if I hadn't thrown mine away, we'd probably both still be in jail.
 
I can tell you from experience, that it really depends a lot on who finds things like your .30-06 pen, and who the Supervisor at that time is, as to whether you'll get to keep it or not. One of TSA's biggest criticism's was inconsistency between airports. Most people didn't realize that it was really inconsistency between screeners and supervisors.

I'll tell you that things like that pen aren't really a grey area, but there are people out there who make them a grey area. Unfortunately, you probably did the right thing (if you wanted to avoid getting hassled about it, anyway) by throwing it away.
 
There's a reason I don't EVER use my travel luggage as range bags. That reason is because I'm way too pretty for prison.


I agree with Gaerek... there's just nothing to be gained by trying to make the bags do double duty. If you get a screener or airport police who want to raise a stink, I expect it won't take too many lawyer hours to cover the cost of a set of quality travel luggage (I know what I paid for our Victorinox Werks 2.0 stuff, and it wasn't cheap, and even then it would probably only scratch the surface of legal fees for a very minor misdemeanor case).

Better to spend the money up front, have separate bags for each purpose, and never worry about a rogue magazine (or worse, pistol) getting found at the worst possible time.
 
I would imagine that, given the egg on the TSA's face over the recent incident with the loaded Ruger LCP, they will probably be very much lacking a sense of humor about anything gun-related at security checkpoints for the foreseeable future.
 
Not really gun parts but....

One fine day wife and I popped for RDX/HMX on a chemical swab. Multiple times (cross contamination is a beotch). Fortunately, we'd had the foresight to bring our IDs and certifications sheets with us (we both work in the explosives industry). While not get out of jail free cards, the TSA was a lot more willing to cut us some slack after hand searches of every nook and cranny of our bags yielded nothing.

Took us about 1.5 hours to get through security, but we still made our flight.
 
Yes i asked other people and most agree the outcome depends on the people working ar the time of incident. I guess i got lucky because i even was allowed to keep the item. For a moment i thought i was in a world of $#++..but in the end all was ok. U have separate bags for range use but that mag had been in my bag since i usually travel by truck. I mistakenly believed i had put it back into my safe. Well lesson learned . Nice to hear most stories have had a positive outcome.
 
I didn't forget something I had packed, but I did get briefly held up by TSA in Atlanta on a return from Afghanistan one time.

Turned out a 9mm casing had ejected into the pen holder stitched to an outside pocket on my pants leg. Not sure if it was detected by metal detector or chemical sniffer, as it was initially noted when I went through that new machine that rotates around and blows air at you.

The initial TSA person was flipping out over a piece of expended brass in a tube pocket that I never use. The TSA supervisor who responded thought it was kind of funny, and sent me on my way.
 
I didn't exactly use my laptop case for a range bag. I had a pistol and two mags in the glovebox of the rental car and took it up to the hotel room. At some point one of the mags slid down into a pocket where I couldn't see it.
 
The initial TSA person was flipping out over a piece of expended brass in a tube pocket that I never use. The TSA supervisor who responded thought it was kind of funny, and sent me on my way.
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The supervisor, in this case, did the right thing. Expended brass is not prohibited. I've heard of people trying to rationalize it as a gun part, but that's ridiculous. It became an issue at our airport because we had a large hunting tourism industry (people wanted to take an Alaskan Grizzly, or Sitka Black Tail) and people like to keep the shell casing that got their trophy. The common sense people among us, of course, wouldn't bat an eyelash at expended brass, but you get those people who think guns and anything related are the devil and make an issue out of a non-issue.
 
After arriving at the Christchurch NZ airport for the return flight to the U.S., I remebered I had my pocket knife in my pants pocket. When it was my turn to go through security, I offered it the NZ security officer. He politely returned it to me then said "We don't worry too much about the little things here in New Zealand, but you will most likely lose it when you go through customs in L.A.!"

He was right, when we landed at LAX, the knife was confinscated and I ws given a very strongly worded lecture!

The transfer of our hunting rifles was faily seamless, but we did get several "looks" from other passangers as we carried our stuff from the international terminal to the domestic terminal for check-in!
 
I can tell you from experience, that it really depends a lot on who finds things like your .30-06 pen, and who the Supervisor at that time is, as to whether you'll get to keep it or not. One of TSA's biggest criticism's was inconsistency between airports. Most people didn't realize that it was really inconsistency between screeners and supervisors.
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I have a tie-clip that is shaped like a (two dimensional) Colt revolver. It's a single piece of metal, with some nice detail in the surface, but still a small, less-than-one-inch long piece of metal with a clip on the back. A TSA agent took great interest in it, rotating it so he could "look down the muzzle", only to find, perhaps with great disappointment, that it was, indeed, a single, flat piece of metal. That didn't stop him from unclipping it, and rotating it around in his hands a few times before giving it back. I'm sure he was employee of the month.
 
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