9outof10mms
Enginerding, good coffee, and factual opinions.
2A Bourbon Hound 2024
Supporting Member
Multi-Factor Enabled
Just got back from a trip out to Seattle—more specifically the Olympics and Rainier. Traveled with my carry rig since we’re currently reciprocal with WA. This was a big family trip; long planned and many firsts for us including the first time flying for my boys. I thought I had everything planned and in order...
I’ve flown with a checked firearm dozens of times. While it differs at each airport and airline, it’s typically a non-issue.
We get to CLT on time, go to the bag check counter, and I check for my keys in anticipation of having to open the small gun safe for the airline employee to “verify its unloaded.” No keys!!! I start sweating bullets—no pun intended—because there’s no way for me to get home and back with the key in time for the flight. The airport was absolutely jam packed at 5:30am (some Scouts conference or something). Here I am, Mr. Got-it-all-planned, and I’m about to really foul up the trip!
It comes to be my turn to approach “the bench” and luckily the lady doesn’t need to see inside the safe. I think the busyness of the airport worked to my advantage. 45 minutes through security and we get to the jetway just as they’re boarding our group!
Problem averted...for now.
We get to Seattle and of course I want the gun on my hip, not locked in a suitcase. Off to Lowe’s for a pry bar. I make quick small talk with the tool employee who confides that he too is “pro 2A” with a warning that I should read Washington’s new i1639 antigun laws.
It’s a wad of garbage legislation that, among other shots at gun rights, makes the gun owner liable of their gun is stolen and used in a crime.
Back out to the parking lot to find a way to discretely pry open a safe to extract a firearm! 20 minutes later and I have it...but now also a totally destroyed lockbox.
Off to the only place in the area showing on-hand stock for a small lockbox—Dick’s Sporting Goods. I know...flog me...infract me...punch my gun holder’s card. In a state that just passed mandatory lock-up laws for guns, nowhere in the Seattle area had them available for quick purchase except that craphole of a store.
On the plus side, the new box is a combo lock. Not possible for ol’ bonehead here to do this again!!!
After a week spent feeling like the only armed non-LEO person in all of WA (or at least the Puget Sound region), we were back at SEATAC to come home.
Their protocol is to be escorted to a semi-private screening room with your very own TSA agent. He requests the box be opened and the gun be examined—by himself. He deems it “safe” after touching it for about 2 seconds and looking at it like a housewife looking at a car engine that won’t start. Then, the kicker: he swabs everything for an explosives test! I’m looking at him with the best “are you sharting me” face and eventually work up the nerve to say “they really make you swab the guy who goes through the extra scrutiny of being checked?” He smiles and says “I know, man...it’s just procedure.” Luckily the computer is smart enough to know gunpowder isn’t what they’re looking for...I guess, because I was cleared.
Score another one for how well the TSA “protects” us.
You’d think my gun was done...but oh no...
We land in CLT. Everyone’s bag comes out on the belt except mine. 20 minutes go by, other flights come and go, still no bag. I preemptively but reluctantly head to the missing bag office. For those who’ve not experienced this life joy, picture the WalMart return line after Christmas.
I start having visions of the airline employee who hauled my bag off from the TSA screening at SEATAC as “required” out of my sight. It gave me something to do, planning out how I’d hunt him down and extract the info from him, as I waited in line.
After waiting another 30 minutes in a line of only 3 or 4, I get my chance to plead my case. The employee is giving me her best “I’m pretending to give a shart about your situation” face while typing a novel’s worth of words, when she stops and says “what color is yo bag?” I tell her—she turns around and there’s my bag sitting right behind her. “It must a gun or something valuable in it” she says out loud.
At this point I don’t give a crap how badly that publicly-broadcasted info startled the other travelers in line. I’m channeling my inner Clint Eastwood “I don’t give a damn—give me a reason” face as I walk off into the sunset and drive home.
Reporting somewhat live after the fact from the field—9outof10mms
I’ve flown with a checked firearm dozens of times. While it differs at each airport and airline, it’s typically a non-issue.
We get to CLT on time, go to the bag check counter, and I check for my keys in anticipation of having to open the small gun safe for the airline employee to “verify its unloaded.” No keys!!! I start sweating bullets—no pun intended—because there’s no way for me to get home and back with the key in time for the flight. The airport was absolutely jam packed at 5:30am (some Scouts conference or something). Here I am, Mr. Got-it-all-planned, and I’m about to really foul up the trip!
It comes to be my turn to approach “the bench” and luckily the lady doesn’t need to see inside the safe. I think the busyness of the airport worked to my advantage. 45 minutes through security and we get to the jetway just as they’re boarding our group!
Problem averted...for now.
We get to Seattle and of course I want the gun on my hip, not locked in a suitcase. Off to Lowe’s for a pry bar. I make quick small talk with the tool employee who confides that he too is “pro 2A” with a warning that I should read Washington’s new i1639 antigun laws.
It’s a wad of garbage legislation that, among other shots at gun rights, makes the gun owner liable of their gun is stolen and used in a crime.
Back out to the parking lot to find a way to discretely pry open a safe to extract a firearm! 20 minutes later and I have it...but now also a totally destroyed lockbox.
Off to the only place in the area showing on-hand stock for a small lockbox—Dick’s Sporting Goods. I know...flog me...infract me...punch my gun holder’s card. In a state that just passed mandatory lock-up laws for guns, nowhere in the Seattle area had them available for quick purchase except that craphole of a store.
On the plus side, the new box is a combo lock. Not possible for ol’ bonehead here to do this again!!!
After a week spent feeling like the only armed non-LEO person in all of WA (or at least the Puget Sound region), we were back at SEATAC to come home.
Their protocol is to be escorted to a semi-private screening room with your very own TSA agent. He requests the box be opened and the gun be examined—by himself. He deems it “safe” after touching it for about 2 seconds and looking at it like a housewife looking at a car engine that won’t start. Then, the kicker: he swabs everything for an explosives test! I’m looking at him with the best “are you sharting me” face and eventually work up the nerve to say “they really make you swab the guy who goes through the extra scrutiny of being checked?” He smiles and says “I know, man...it’s just procedure.” Luckily the computer is smart enough to know gunpowder isn’t what they’re looking for...I guess, because I was cleared.
Score another one for how well the TSA “protects” us.
You’d think my gun was done...but oh no...
We land in CLT. Everyone’s bag comes out on the belt except mine. 20 minutes go by, other flights come and go, still no bag. I preemptively but reluctantly head to the missing bag office. For those who’ve not experienced this life joy, picture the WalMart return line after Christmas.
I start having visions of the airline employee who hauled my bag off from the TSA screening at SEATAC as “required” out of my sight. It gave me something to do, planning out how I’d hunt him down and extract the info from him, as I waited in line.
After waiting another 30 minutes in a line of only 3 or 4, I get my chance to plead my case. The employee is giving me her best “I’m pretending to give a shart about your situation” face while typing a novel’s worth of words, when she stops and says “what color is yo bag?” I tell her—she turns around and there’s my bag sitting right behind her. “It must a gun or something valuable in it” she says out loud.
At this point I don’t give a crap how badly that publicly-broadcasted info startled the other travelers in line. I’m channeling my inner Clint Eastwood “I don’t give a damn—give me a reason” face as I walk off into the sunset and drive home.
Reporting somewhat live after the fact from the field—9outof10mms
