Flying with Guns

So last Wednesday at the ungodly hour of 3am I saddled up and headed off to the airport.

I’ve flown out of San Francisco and Oakland airports at least ten times since 9/11, and every time except one I’ve carried firearms with me. (The one time I flew without guns was the week after 9/11, when I had to visit our office in Manhattan.)

Here’s what I took with me on this trip:

    

(.308 Encore with 17.5″ barrel, .308 Encore with 15″ barrel, .357 Security-Six with 4″ barrel)

I carried them in two of the Sportsman’s Guide Guide Gear “house brand” 6-pistol gun cases. They’re cheap at $40 (they scratch like they were made of butter) but they’ve done the job since 2001 without problems. The drill at the airport is always the same. When flying with guns, you cannot use the self-check-in or even curbside check-in procedures. Because the law requires you to clearly state to a human airline employee that you wish to “declare an unloaded firearm,” you have to stand in the long lines. So I always get there early. I’m always tempted to follow my law professor’s admonition to speak “in a loud booming voice” when making the declaration — “MISS, I WANT TO DECLARE AN UNLOADED FIREARM” — but I just can’t bring myself to do it.

The funny bit is that I have yet to encounter a ticket agent in either SFO or Oakland who didn’t blanch bug-eyed when I made even my soft-voiced declaration. They always run for a supervisor who knows what to do with firearms, and –surprise, surprise! — he always turns out to be an older male.

When flying home, it’s the opposite. Whether it’s the Boise, New Orleans, Orlando, Des Moines, or Denver airports, in my experience, ticket agents — many of them female — outside of California see no big deal about flying with firearms. They’ve even said “nice guns!” once or twice, which pretty much makes my day.

Anyway, the ticket agent verifies your gun is empty, then hands you an orange card declaring the firearm unloaded, which you sign and place in the case. After that, technically you can’t touch the cases anymore. An airline employee takes custody of your cases and walks them over to the Transportation Security Administration folks, who either hand-check the cases again, or run them through the x-ray machine, or both. They then pop their own TSA card in the case. They will generally ask you if you want them to lock the cases. I say “yes” because my combinations are all set at “000” so some other TSA agent doesn’t bust the lock trying to open the cases. If you have a padlocked gun case, I’d suggest you have them lock it but don’t be surprised if you have a busted lock on the other end half the time. Other TSA employees do rummage around in your stuff occasionally after you’ve checked it. I’ve never had anything missing, though. And only once has a TSA employee actually weighed my 11-pound-per-bag allotment of ammunition. That time I went a little over, and had to move some to another bag. No big deal.

That’s it! Depending on the airport layout, your bags either disappear on TSA’s conveyor belt, or TSA gives your bags back to the airline employee, who checks them back at the airline counter. Pretty smooth, considering.

And no, nobody in TSA or baggage handling has ever stolen my guns from the cases, even with the combination set at triple zero. However, if you carry guns worth more than $2,500 (the limit of airline liability for lost luggage on a domestic flight) you might want to take out travel insurance just to be safe.