Curmudgeonly writer Dave Petzal, in his "Gun Nut" identity, reminisces about the old days. I might start filing him under "Decline and Fall":
"In the early 1970s, when I began flying to hunt, you could take a rifle on board a plane in a soft case and ask the stewardess (which is what they were called then) to give it to the pilot and have him keep it in the cockpit. Contrast this with last year, when prior to flying home from a hunt, a vigilant security employee relieved me of a 1/2-inch safety pin before I was allowed to board.
"At the Charlestown, West Virginia, airport a couple of years ago, a bunch of my fellow gun writers were forbidden (in contradiction of TSA policy) to take riflescopes with them onto the plane by a dedicated if brain-damaged TSA agent who informed them that the scopes “…could be used as clubs.” "
Read it all-- more, and worse, as an old girlfriend used to say.
In 1996 in Mongolia I was on an internal flight where a lovely, chic young woman carried a bolt- action Mauser sporter to her seat. Uncased. Far as I could see nobody even checked to see if it was loaded...
See below.
1 comment:
Contrast this with the airport at Billings, MT, where the line for travelers with guns is often longer than that of those without them...
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