Sea-Dated
Charter Member
Flying home to Md. from Orlando Sunday. My bag gets too much interest from the xray screener. I ask if there is a problem. and Get the "We'll be with you in a minute" brush off.
They called more and more people over, even brought a digital camera to take a pic of the image on the screen.
Finally they call a Orlando police officer over, he looks on the screen, grabs my bag and walks it to me. He opens it ( small duffle bag) and pulls out a single .223 round from the bottom of the bag. He asks where it came from. I explained I used that bag to go to the range once and it must have fallen out of a box and I missed it. He was fine with that explanation but said he had to call it in.
So he makes a phone call, then calls me to the phone, and says to talk to the FBI agent on the other end. The agent was a total hard azz. Telling me even though I have never been in any trouble in my life that just means I haven't been caught, he doesn't trust me, etc. etc. etc. Tells me to wait till he checks me out and decides what to do with me.
The cop meanwhile is totally cool with everything. Says there is nothing I could really do to take down a plane with a single round, that he goes to the range all the time, and probably has loose rounds in everything he owns. And that as far as he is concerned as Americans we have the right to own a firearm thus we have the right to own ammo, so this should not be a huge deal.
Anyway about 20-30 min later FBI agent calls back, reads me the riot act and says he will let me slide this once but while I don't have a criminal record from this I now have a FBI record. Have no idea what that means.
So I effed up, I admit it, got good cop bad cop routine, but still made my flight, and will check my bags much closer from now on.
Oh and I lost one .223 round, now have a FBI record
, and btw that same round was in that bag when I flew out of BWI Friday and they missed it so........:willy_nilly:
Had a similar thing happen to me in Tulsa flying to Chicago. I had gone to the range a couple days before I flew and I wore the same shoes to the airport that I wore the range. When they swabbed my shoes for explosives, it came up red or purple or whatever. Anyway, they drug me to an office and asked why I had explosive material, gunpowder, residue on my shoes. I explained to them that I had been at the range and showed them my membership card, CCW card and my ammo card that the range dates when you visit. They called the range and verified my story and let me go on to catch my flight. Not sure what they would have done if it had been after range hours and they couldn't have verified my story.
Needless to say, I know have a separate set of shoes that I travel in to make sure that doesn't happen again but I guess a blond, blue eyed 35 year old white male is on their high risk list.
