Red Plum, if you read my postings more carefully, you'll see that I am not in any way attempting to exonerate the guy who carried a gun through a security checkpoint.
I don't have a position on whether or not the guy in question was criminal, or, arrogant, or merely incredibly careless, since I don't have the facts, and neither do the rest of us.
We don't know, for example, whether or not he knew that the gun was in his bag. What I do know is that my carrying a knife through security was not a result of arrogance, nor of callous disregard for the law or security procedures, nor a product of ill intent, but simply a mistake stemming from a certain level of disorganization in packing and storing my personal property. And I don't wear it as a badge of pride; instead my reaction is more like, "<gulp> Wow, that was stupid, glad I got lucky."
People make stupid mistakes all the time. Sometimes luck favors us idiots, and those mistakes have no practical consequence. Sometimes they result in somebody inadvertently flying a planeload of people into terrain. Mistakes are not, in general, treated as criminal acts. We don't know if this guy made a mistake or if he was toting the gun around knowingly and deliberately.
I might even argue that, even if the guy didn't know the gun was in his bag, the simple fact of not knowing where his gun was, is, on the face, evidence of incredibly negligent, possibly even criminally negligent, lack of control over his firearm.
All I'm doing with my postings here is calling out people for making statements that are dogmatic but false. Contrary to what has been posted here, violating the law is not, by definition, a criminal act. Only violating a criminal law is a criminal act, and the vast majority of laws define procedure and regulation rather than crimes. Also, it's false that "anyone who carries a firearm onto an aircraft is a bad guy," because air marshals and FFDO qualified crew are not bad guys, nor is the idiot who didn't know the weapon was in his bag. How about "Anyone who knowingly carries a firearm onto an aircraft when he is not authorized to do so, is a bad guy." See the difference?
Words matter.