What’s the best way to be certain your checked baggage won’t be tampered with? Apparently, the answer is to travel with a gun in your checked baggage. Matt Brandon tells his unfortunate tale of losing some expensive camera equipment while traveling, due to the camera being in checked baggage instead of hand carried. The interesting part comes in the comments to his post.
One note on using TSA rules to your advantage.
Weapons that travel MUST be in a hard case, must be declared upon check-in, and MUST BE LOCKED by a TSA official.
A “weapons” is defined as a rifle, shotgun, pistol, airgun, and STARTER PISTOL. Yes, starter pistols – those little guns that fire blanks at track and swim meets – are considered weapons…and do NOT have to be registered in any state in the United States.
I have a starter pistol for all my cases. All I have to do upon check-in is tell the airline ticket agent that I have a weapon to declare…I’m given a little card to sign, the card is put in the case, the case is given to a TSA official who takes my key and locks the case, and gives my key back to me.
That’s the procedure. The case is extra-tracked…TSA does not want to lose a weapons case. This reduces the chance of the case being lost to virtually zero.
It’s a great way to travel with camera gear…I’ve been doing this since Dec 2001 and have had no problems whatsoever.
Hope it works for you…
John
(via Bruce Schneier’s security blog via boingboing)