Re: Has it gone too far? NY content inside.
NY is insane.
Here's my favorite NY/NYC experience:
I flew through La Guardia two years ago with my duty pistol as checked baggage (and Federal law obviously allows for me to do so as an LEO; nationwide CCW). I thought I was going to get arrested before I got my boarding pass, even with me checking my gun in baggage properly.
I've flown this way dozens of times, to dozens of destinations. The procedure, as many of you know, is generally simple (if your gun is going in baggage -- flying armed is a whole different animal these days):
-Gun in a locked hard-sided case, unloaded
-Ammo in an ammo box
-Sign the form saying the gun isn't loaded
-Declare the gun at check-in
-Wait for the TSA to do their song and dance at the counter before taking your bag for whatever special screening they do on it at that particular airport.
The NYC experience went like this:
When I flew in I retrieved my gun-carrying bag without any issue at the baggage carousel, and went on about my business for the week that I was in the city. When I arrived at the check-in counter for the trip home I advised the airline employee that I'm a police officer, and was checking a firearm, and figured she needed to call the TSA (standard procedure). She told me that she needed to call the police about it instead, per La Guardia policy. The lady then walked over to a work station that was a few down from where she was helping me, and made the call from that spot, appearing as if she was trying to make sure I couldn't hear her.
About a minute later I had three Port Authority officer converge on me as if I was someone they saw as a threat (no guns drawn or anything, just that obvious body language that indicated that they meant business with me). They then took my gun case out of the suitcase and set it aside, before I was barraged with questions:
-Are you a police officer (my business card is taped to the gun case I was carrying, so that might have been a hint. Nevertheless, back here we never ask that question of flyers anyway)?
-Where are your credentials AND your badge (had both, fortunately, though credentials are enough around here)?
-What gun are you carrying, what's the serial number, how many rounds of ammo do you have, what brand of ammo are you carrying, what type of ammo is it, etc?
-What is your sergeant's name? What is your work phone number?
-What is your home address? What's your home phone number?
I mean, seriously, this shit was ridiculous. They weren't asking me out of interest in the firearm, they were interrogating me at the check-in counter, with 50 people behind me in line. At any other airport I've ever been to, any citizen can check a gun in baggage without a problem, just so long as they follow the TSA procedures (which I was). Then, to make matters worse, they actually took my gun out of the case, and held it over their heads so that they could read the serial number off of the bottom of the frame.
Given how goofy these guys were acting about the whole thing, I played things a bit naive when they started asking a lot of specific questions about my ammunition and magazines. "Gee, guys, I don't know... I'm just carrying whatever they issued me". If these guys couldn't figure out how to read a box of Speer Gold Dot, I wasn't about to explain to them that I was carrying the ubber-scary hollow point bullets used by professional actors and terrorists EVERYWHERE!
Anyway, this whole ordeal took about twenty minutes, after which they finally called the TSA clowns over to do their song and dance with my checked bag. By this point I was starting to get a bit frustrated, and asked one of the officers if there was some sort of problem with the manner in which I was transporting my firearm. The guy responded by saying something like: "oh, no, you're fine since you're a cop. But, people always think they can just show up and put their gun in baggage without a permit to own/carry them. If you weren't a cop you'd have been charged with a felony. It's NYC law!"
Needless to say, if I don't visit that city again I won't be disappointed. I was recently given the opportunity to head to DC for security at the presidential inauguration. I politely declined the "opportunity", since I have no desire to find out how screwed up the DC system is, even for LEO's (and, I'm not exactly a fan of our current president anyway).
