Friendly Skies?

Calendar January 21, 2004 | Posted by Aubrey Turner

I decided that I would chance flying to the NRA Annual Meeting.  It’s faster and it’s less expensive overall.  I don’t know how the security will be, though, as that’s the big unknown.  I’ve heard a lot of conflicting things about the TSA.

In an effort to be better informed, I checked out the TSA’s website and came across the list of prohibited items.  They also include some items that are permitted, just for clarification.  I was slightly amused by the following item, though:

I guess someone got their butt chewed for not allowing the robot through the checkpoint, which led to this entry.  It’s a perfect example of the problem with government droid personality types.  They have to have every damn thing spelled out to them and freeze up when demanded to think for themselves.

Category Categories: Miscellaneous

3 Comments

  1. Kevin White says:
    January 21, 2004 at 12:20 pm

    Hmm, here’s a true story. I believe it was 1984 or 1985, Christmas. The Transformers had just hit big that year, and inevitably, we were all receiving the toys for Christmas. I got Megatron. Megatron turned into a reasonable replica of a Walther P-38. The robot form has sorta goofy looking and had sharp pieces that stuck out a bit.

    So we were heading up to Massachusetts the day after Christmas, and of course, I wanted to bring my new toy with me. I wanted to bring it on the plane, in fact, for some reason, so we packed it in the carry-on, and put it in gun form in the interest of space.

    The security was different back then, and I think we got to the inner sanctums of DFW, but when we went to go get donuts for the wait, we had to pass through X-ray. That’s when they found my toy gun. They took us “to the back” and asked about it. I turned it into a robot and showed them—just a toy.

    Not good enough. They said that it was such a close replica that it could still be used to threaten people. So they kept it. My father was extremely irate, of course, but there was little to be done.

  2. Aubrey Turner says:
    January 22, 2004 at 5:57 am

    I don’t blame your father for being irate.  Unfortunately, it appears that this rule is still in place.  A little further down in the TSA’s list is says that toy guns are allowed unless they are “realistic replicas”.

  3. Dale in Louisiana says:
    January 22, 2004 at 7:41 pm

    Just remember, this is the SAME federal government that feels it can tell you how much water your toilet should use when you flush…

    Our founding fathers whould see us now…