Good Morning All:
Just another day for the T.S.A. from the New York Times!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/u...gtype=Homepage
The weapon was found in a man’s checked luggage in Baltimore. He said he was a military service member and wanted to take it home as a souvenir from Kuwait.[img]file:///C:/Users/Bill/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.png[/img]By Mihir Zaveri· July 29, 2019·
To the ever-growing list of deadly weapons, creatively concealed narcotics and poisonous creatures routinely found in people’s luggage and publicized by the Transportation Security Administration online, add something new:A missile launcher.The T.S.A. said it found the weapon in a man’s checked luggage at Baltimore-Washington International Airport around 5:45 a.m. Monday.
[img]file:///C:/Users/Bill/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image003.jpg[/img]The man, whom the T.S.A. did not name, told the authorities that he was an active member of the military and wanted take the missile launcher home with him to Jacksonville, Tex., as a souvenir from Kuwait.How he even got it to B.W.I. is not clear (as is how he acquired such unusual taste in memorabilia). =center
Yet the T.S.A. said the weapon, which was “inert,” was quickly confiscated and turned over to the Maryland fire marshal for “safe disposal.”
The man was then allowed to catch his flight.“Perhaps he should have picked up a keychain instead!” Lisa Farbstein, a T.S.A. spokeswoman,
, sharing a photo of the gray, cylindrical object lying on top of a pile of clothes, including what appear to be military fatigues.The T.S.A. did not answer whether this was the first missile launcher it had ever confiscated.But it is not out of the ordinary for the agency to publicize unusual items that it finds.
The T.S.A.’s Instagram account has close to one million followers. Some of the discoveries the agency has shared there include snakes concealed in computer hard drives, bricks of marijuana hidden in Christmas wrapping and replicas of Freddy Krueger’s bladed gloves. Some confiscated items seem, on their face, benign. In 2012, the T.S.A. barred a woman from taking a cupcake onto a plane, explaining that the cupcake was packed in a jar filled with icing and that the icing exceeded the amount of gel allowed in carry-on luggage.Other items are more obviously dangerous. Every year, the T.S.A. finds and confiscates thousands of guns — sometimes loaded — at airport security or in checked luggage.
Not everything is caught. In January, a Delta Air Lines passenger carried, by accident, a loaded gun through airport security at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. The passenger later discovered the firearm and alerted the authorities.Not everything that is found needs to be confiscated. In June 2017, the T.S.A. shared on its Twitter page a photo of a live, 20-pound Atlantic lobster a passenger took through security at Boston Logan International Airport.It was unclear what became of the missile launcher. The Maryland state fire marshal did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday evening asking about its fate.The episode, however, allowed the T.S.A. to offer a reminder, for those who needed one: Don’t try to take a military weapon onto an airplane.