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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

How dare you question the TSA, the best and brightest of us. \s

As a funny counter, I recently traveled through 6 TSA checkpoints with a loaded magazine in my bag. I had it from when I was at my farm, oops. Was a little concerned because I was in Boston when they found it (I’m based out of Tennessee). But they let me go and confiscated it.

Point being, if they can’t find a loaded magazine, I doubt they’d be able to find money intentionally. Then again, might have more incentive to find the money

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Boston is not a gun friendly town. You got lucky.

Yeah, I generally agree.

That said, there’s a couple things:

1. You’re technically allowed to travel through anywhere with any firearms in the US (I only had a magazine, not a firearm) legally. That includes planes, but you have to check the bags. That said, they can still arrest you and not follow the law.

2. I carry a conceal carry permit with reciprocity with most states for this very reason. I actually showed it to them and it made things much smoother

You got really lucky! In MA possession of ammunition without a (MA issued) permit is a crime with up to 2 years in jail.

MA doesn't have ANY reciprocity with other states regarding your CCW and the City of Boston in particular has a ban on any high-capacity (>10 rounds) magazines of ANY sort/age. MA banned hi-capacity mags but only ones made after 1994, pre-ban ones are ok, just not in Boston (and I think a few other towns).

You are right about peaceable journey, but I would not risk any of my liberty or rights on the good nature of a LEO in such a state.

Boston, along with many Democrat strongholds in America, is strongly in favor of disarming the public, including law abiding citizens. The fact that this is normalized, including confiscation from a law abiding citizen, is absurd. There is an important legal document which states: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Nevermind the fact that legal gun owners and especially CHP holders are responsible for approximately zero crime.

TSA agents are federal employees and federal law prohibits carrying-on ammunition on planes. It is not Boston specific other than that's where OP got caught. You can still check it if you want. I assume the reason is to reduce the chances of accidental discharge causing risk to the plane and/or the prevent one part of a weapon that could be used for hijacking. Even if laws allowed you to take bullets into airports, I have no doubt that the airlines (private business people choose to patronize) would prohibit you from carrying ammunition onto their planes and they'd have every right to do so.

I believe you are mistaken, as so very many people are, about that document. If you are quoting an important legal document, it's important, wouldn't you agree, to get the exact text correct, otherwise the meaning might change? Especially if the text is used for justification to allow a wide, practically unregulated population to be armed? Let's see, I am willing to bet the following statement is the actual quote from the document you reference, which says something quite different (to me). Here it is: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." nevermind that the more legal gun holders there are, the more opportunities for criminals to get guns. Legal gun owners routinely do not secure their weapons in the manner prescribed for responsible gun ownership(I grew up in the south, I can count the number of gun safes I've seen in houses on 1 hand). In fact, many decry the safeguards as imperiling their lives should a crisis spontaneously occur. I argue that those individuals are in fact responsible for a non-negligible amount of crime, since their actions (purchasing a firearm and then failing to secure it against threats) directly leads to more gun crime. But undoubtedly these reasonable arguments and facts will do nothing to move your position, so I guess I just wasted both our times.

Your “clarification” was to post a famously ambiguous sentence. It’s trivial to parse that as the militia being regulated, not the “bearing arms” part. Especially since it’s explicitly stating that the right “shall not be infringed”.

Funny that you start with agreeing that the meaning is ambiguous, and then follow up with it being trivial to parse. So what is it? Ambiguous or trivial to parse? I don’t think you can have it both ways.

And further, since it is ambiguous, would it be so difficult for us to come together as a nation and, well, reduce the ambiguity? It's not like the Constitution is a suicide pact, we are allowed to make changes.

It's quite literally an amendment.

We can have changes of changes, can't we?

Doesn't seem like it.

It’s trivial to parse it either way without mental gymnastics.

About 15 years ago my dad accidentally carried a pocket knife in his carry-on for about half a dozen different business trips before the TSA found it (he had used the same bag for a camping trip a month or two before). That it took so long to find destroyed what little trust we already had that the TSA was any more than security theater.

You're misunderstanding the mechanism of the TSA. How it actually works is that after "terrorists" get all riled up "hating us for our freedom", the experience of having to deal with the diametrically-opposed-to-freedom TSA takes the wind right out of their sails.

I used to frequent a firearms related forum and someone asked if anyone had accidentally travelled with a firearm and there were plenty of stories.

Lots of examples of traveling with ammunition either loose or in magazines and it not being caught on airport x-ray. But also stories of people grabbing something from a carry-on and realizing they forgot their loaded handgun was in there.

Normally it's not that big a deal if you're flying within the US (though NY and NJ can be dicey), but I also recall a story where someone flew international and the destination was a country that would put you in prison for a long time even if you came forward (I think it was Japan or China).

They were asking advice on what to do and I think in the end they unloaded it, took the gun apart (barrel, slide, frame, etc) and dumped each part in a separate trash bin far, far apart.

Recently, Turks&Caicos:

https://cruiseradio.net/cruise-passenger-arrest-in-grand-tur...

Just a few bullets, 12 yrs confinement.

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