I know this is terrible on many levels but I can’t hold back a very dark chuckle:
If a screenwriter or other fictional storyteller tried to make up this story, they’d be accused of wild and implausible stereotyping.
I have been through that airport, and they asked me questions like did I pack my own bags, did anybody give me anything to take with me, did I have any weapons or ammunition, was I absolutely sure. Plus they X-rayed my luggage. When I asked the security person why they would even ask me that, would anyone pack live rounds in their bag, they replied, yes, it has happened by accident. It seems they were not bullshitting.
Ammunition, sure, I can see someone trying that, but “the kids found an artillery shell! can we keep it?” is a whole new level of derp.
Well, the empty case from a fired huge artillery shell makes a great umbrella stand. It’s just brass, after all.
Ironic, because it takes some real brass to try to carry a live one through Israeli airport security.
Was it really live, though? Your link says it looked live, or at least they weren’t sure, and therefore evacuated the area as a precaution:
For comparison, here is an empty case:
Rule one on explosives: If you’re not sure whether it’s live, it’s live.
Maybe it’s an American thing, maybe it’s just local to me, but my airport is regularly finding this kind of stuff. Loaded guns in carry-on luggage, usually because someone didn’t know the rules. Loaded weapons be carried concealed (ie in a purse, in a holster that they’re wearing etc). In those cases, the person usually claims it was an accident. To be honest, I figure about half of them are telling the truth. I’m sure some are just being 2A assholes or are ignorant about how 2A works in an airport), but I think some of them (even if they’re also 2A types) are so used to wearing their gun that they really did forget to take it off. Think about if phones weren’t allowed. A lot of people would still bring them by accident because they’re so used to having it in their pocket.
This article says that in 2021 the TSA confiscated, nationally, almost 6000 guns at their checkpoints. 23 at my local airport and 91 at O’Hare.
I didn’t look at the article, but that was my first question as well. If it’s not live, it’s just a bullet shaped piece of brass, right? It poses no more danger than anything else you could swing around and hit someone over the head with.
Hell, even if it was live, I’m guessing they didn’t have an accomplice smuggling a gun onto the plane as well.
(don’t get mad if this is the wrong gun, it was my best guess)
I remember at the security checkpoint in, I think it was SFO, there was a punk with piercings everywhere, metal studs in his clothing, and a bullet belt. He was there for quite a while, and nowhere near done by the time I got through.
I have a friend like that. From time to time he has to remove them all (ie medical imagine) and it always looks really odd. Like if your dad shaved his mustache that he’s had since before you were born.
I’ve been to that airport - it’s the scariest airport in the world, with multiple security checkpoints and intense interrogation at the door, in the queue, at the check-in desk, at the doors before security. I wouldn’t try and smuggle so much as a mars bar.
I was once flying to the UK from Toronto Pearson, and watched as security confiscated a wall clock made of a circular saw blade that a tourist was trying to bring in their carry-on. Doy.
Yeah, I can actually see someone plausibly forgetting having a gun on them/in their suitcase/carryon or having packed ammunition in the wrong place, if they are just used to always being around having a gun and ammo. It’s not my lifestyle, but it doesn’t surprise me at all except that I would have expected more than just 91 guns recovered at ORD (although 2021 was, I assume, a much lighter travel year than normal.)
You made me laugh.
When the kids were in middle school, Mr VOW sort of over-trimmed his moustache. Trying to even it up, you know. When he discovered he had trimmed it down to a mini-Hitler 'stache, he just shaved it off.
Now, I have known him since his pre-moustache days. So his face was recognizable to me. However, The Daughter had a screaming fit, and refused to have anything to do with the clean-shaven guy who SAID he was her father!
The only way she’d talk to him was if he put his finger on his upper lip, to simulate the missing moustache.
He had to grow the thing back in a hurry!
~VOW
To be very clear, that’s how many TSA recovered, which doesn’t necessarily have any relation to how many made it on to planes that shouldn’t have. There’s been studies showing that (depending on what you read) anywhere between 70 and 95% of guns make their way right past security.
If anyone is familiar with the youtube channel Wendover Productions, he did a video on this airport a few years ago. It goes over (well, glosses over, it’s only 15 minutes) a lot of the security stuff and just how much questioning you’ll have to deal with if you fit the ‘wrong’ profile (ie, being Arab).
They seem to focus more on interviewing (interrogating) people over technology like most other airports. Right down to multiple interviews to check for reactions to questions and inconsistencies in stories. They also, as he says, ‘unapologetically’ use profiling. If you’re Arab, plan to spend a considerable amount of time getting grilled by security.
Oh wow. Now that seems really high to me. I might believe the inverse, 5-30% make it through (and even the 30% feels high to me), but the vast majority? Is it simply a matter of the carry-on-bag guns going through the x-ray and nobody paying attention? I would have though a gun rather easy to pick out. And if it’s on your person, certainly you’ll get caught at the x-ray or body scan, or at least I would think. I’m assuming it must be the bag scanners that are the sieve letting through the guns. Is there no automated software used to help detect guns? I would have thought by now there’s some sort of AI image detection to help with that. (Though I understand it takes time and money to replace the technology already at the airports. I am seeing more advanced scanning machines over the last couple of years.)
Except that only works if the machine is plugged in, properly working and someone is actually watching the monitor.
I don’t have a link to anything right now, but I’m quite sure there’s a number of youtube ‘investigative’ style videos showing how easy it is to walk through security with contraband.
I would assume there is as well, but I’d also assume it can’t catch everything and again, it has to be working properly and people have to be paying attention to it.
I think it was Twain who said “The truth is indeed stranger than fiction. This is because fiction is constrained by being plausable and rational. The truth is not.”
Re Is It Live
Even I with no knowledge of guns and ammo, and very little common sense know that you assume every gun is loaded and that any ammunition is live.
Now the important questions: What weapon fired it? Israeli or Syrian? It’s what - 40mm or so?