I’m afraid air travel is getting too fussy. I miss the good old days, when you could walk into an airport and get on a plane without an hour-and-a-half of charades.

I remember a business trip to Tennessee years ago, before we had Sept. 11 and the guy trying to light his shoes on fire. I had been traveling around Tennessee for a week and was boarding a plane in Nashville.

My luggage was all checked, but while waiting to board the plane I remembered a knife in my pocket: A little handmade knife with a two-inch blade. The knife was given to me by a friend, and I certainly didn’t want to lose it.

I went to the ticket counter and told the agent, “I forgot to put this pocket knife in my luggage. Is there a problem taking it on the airplane?”

The ticketing agent got a quizzical look on her face and said, “Every man in Tennessee has a knife in his pocket. You could go ask security. We can box it as luggage if they have a problem with it.”

A woman at security looked at my little knife and laughed. “You ain’t gonna hurt nobody with that thing!” Those were the days when airport security knew a crazy man with a pocketknife and a two-inch blade could be more annoying than a cell phone user – but not by much.

An American Rifleman magazine story illustrated the extent to which TSA has lost its bearings. The Rifleman item says a man flying out of Newark’s Liberty Airport was detained by security when an X-ray machine operator noticed a silver bullet on his key ring.
This was a commemorative bullet from the NRA. It was made of a molded material, with a hole in it to fit a key ring. That looks about as much like a bullet as I do. This man was detained for 45 minutes while being questioned by a security supervisor, searched again and his baggage X-rayed a second time.

They finally let him board the plane – but kept his silver bullet, saying it was “threatening looking.”

A similar thing happened to a friend who went moose hunting in Alaska. After noticing his gun case had been opened and the rifle tampered with on his initial flight, he decided to take the bolt out of the firearm for the return trip.

My friend thought disabling the rifle might dissuade someone who thought his salary was low and should be augmented with a new rifle. The bolt went into my friend’s carry-on bag.

The X-ray machine operator came unglued when she saw the rifle bolt. She didn’t know what it was until my friend told her, but she and her supervisor decided it was way too dangerous to carry on the airplane. They checked it as baggage.

This seems kind of silly to most of us, but we’re not trained security agents. A trained security agent knows a bolt is a small part of a rifle, but what if everyone on the plane had part of a rifle? Suppose a man gets on with a bolt, another with a barrel, a little boy with a stock, an old lady with a trigger guard and two screws, et cetera.
All of these passengers could assemble in the restroom and put the whole thing back together. Then, all we need is a guy with a silver bullet on his key ring, and we’ve got a dangerous situation.
And how are we going to defend ourselves? They’ve taken away our pocketknives!

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.