I bet they confiscate the pins.

“TSA weapon”: any object

As Bruce Lee said: “If a man is determined to bite your nose off, there is nothing you can do”. With or without toy gun jewelry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Infantryman_Badge

I was kind of joking about “deserving it” (though I do think the necklace is ugly). Sorry that I wasn’t clear on that.

I meant her. It’s like wearing a TSA SUCKS
t-shirt to the airport. You’re asking for trouble. I agree that it’s stupid, but easily avoided.

My point about terrorism was that you don’t even have to assume any malice on the part of the passenger with the fake weapon to see why the restriction is justifiable.

I bet they have heart attacks when they see steampunk stuff.

I know someone above was disemvowelled for suggesting it, but I also believe that her choice of jewelry to wear was to provoke a possible story (probably for her blog or something).

Awesome. Well-said.

What the hell would it shoot? A bead, maybe.

“Our Miniature Revolver ref. C1ST is legally classified as a “Deemed non-firearm” in Canada due to the low velocity of the 2.34mm cartridge that it discharges.”

Not to mention the fact that the charm in question is 15% smaller still, and obviously has no moving parts. And even if it were functional, the bullets would have to be no bigger than grains of sand.

It was a relatively thick, shorter than usual wallet chain (just meant to keep my wallet from being snatched out of my pocket while travelling – not one of those over the top, hang halfway to one’s knees things). Honestly, I don’t think it would have made it much more than halfway around a human neck (and at the thickness it was, it would have been a completely ineffectual garrote).

If the screeners don’t use judgement, but ruthlessly apply the rules, to the point of absurdity even, beyond what is reasonable, there’s less chance of them screwing up and if something does go wrong, they can avoid responsibility because they were doing what they were told to do (not using their judgement).

It’s not about our safety, it’s about theirs.

It even includes a “how to”.

Anyway, what I was saying above is not meant to excuse the dumbness of this action, but you have to remember that these screeners are under an enormous amount of pressure to keep the flow of passengers going. For each individual passenger, they only have a few seconds to evaluate them, an evaluation that they are constantly reminded is a matter of life or death. Consequently, when a question comes up, they (probably on a subconscious level) revert to the strategy of Least Harmful Effect.

The LHE of a false positive on a gun trinket is that a passenger gets pissed off, and needs to check the item. The LHE on a false negative is that someone could cause mayhem, death and destruction.

It’s little surprise that screeners prefer to err on the side of a false positive. Again, I’m not saying this is the way it should be, but the first step to fixing something is understanding exactly how it’s broken in the first place.

It was a copy of “The Master Sniper” by Stephen Hunter and I was sitting there reading it a TSA guy walked by and gave me the eye and I briefly wondered if they would be so paranoid/stupid as to think that because I was reading a novel with that name I might be some sort of security threat. I figured even they were not that wacked.

Now I’m not so sure.

“I’m sorry– we can’t let you on the plane. . . you’re thinking about guns right now.”

I took my belt off to pass through the metal detectors and a TSA minion noticed it through the X-ray machine. I was called to the side and spent five minutes telling her how ridiculous the situation was. Her manager came over, laughed in her face, and sent me on my way. I guess I got lucky.