My husband had a titanium hip replacement in July and we took our first flight last weekend. I’m not sure why (maybe staffing?), but the TSA agents made anyone who didn’t have metal joints or a pacemaker go through the regular scanner - only people with metal in their bodies could go through the one where you hold your arms over your head.
Standard metal detectors have a wide variation of sensitivity. They can be manually set more or less sensitive. I’m sure that TSA has a standard setting, but I know agents that have said, if they are bored they will make the detector more sensitive, to give themselves more to do…or conversely, if it’s really busy, they set them to be less sensitive to speed up the screening process.
Bullets are primarily made of lead and lead is unlikely to set off an airport metal detector. Lead has low conductivity and weak magnetism compared to common metals like iron. While it can be detected by some specialized equipment, it may slip past standard airport systems, which are more sensitive to ferrous metals.
Incidentally, if by “Bullwinkle scanner”, you’re thinking of something like this Leidos Pro:Vision CI people scanner, I’m starting to see something like the second one, a Rohde & Schwarz QPS201 Security Scanner. So you’re no longer holding your arms up like Bullwinkle or like you’re being arrested, but instead have your arms down but away from your body. The new scanner is more open than the old one and might be more easier for claustrophobes.
Neato! The last time I traveled by air I had broken my shoulder a few weeks earlier but had to go across the country due to a death in the family.
I couldn’t raise my right arm much higher than the silhouette in the new machine shows.
I figure they must have plenty of people in similar situations because nobody gave me grief about it–I did have a sling with me as well, though that proves nothing.
And I learned how clueless people can be: I sat in an aisle seat and every single person who passed by me ran into my broken shoulder, even though I clearly had my arm in a sling. I wanted to have some strong words with them, but what could I do with a full planeload of people laser-focused on getting to the overhead bins?