I truly understand the whole thing about armed individuals at airports being a safety concern. Yet, armed people at an airport should not necessarily cause alarm and, in most instances, should certainly not cause a panic. Yet panic all to often accompanies the legal gun owner usually because of gun fearing libturds.
Take for example the arrival of a passenger at LAX (Los Angeles Airport) who reportedly either brandished a firearm or had a gun case in open view. You would think there would be a major difference between the two, that is between brandishing a weapon and merely having a gun case in public view but it seems that quite a few people have not quite figured out that difference yet. It has been reported, here, that a man arriving at LAX was arrested after he did one of the two but the report was unable to clarify which one it was that he actually did.
It seems someone saw the man either take a firearm out of its case and brandish it (wave it around) or merely have a firearms case in his possession. That person called the police. Instead of the police doing what would have been the sensible thing, which would have been to approach the individual and question him and then examine the contents of the firearms case which contained a firearm that the man had legally and properly checked in with the airline in his checked luggage, the police called in the bomb squad to examine the contents of the gun case. Since the contents of the gun case had already been checked, when the man had gone through security screening at his point of departure, and since that would have been documented by the airline and TSA, can someone, anyone, tell me the logic behind calling out the bomb squad due to a report of someone seeing either a gun or gun case! It makes no sense to me but then it does seem that law enforcement has been overreacting to a lot of things lately, this just but one example. Based on what little is disclosed in the article, it makes me wonder if the police reaction, to call in the bomb squad, was a total waste of the taxpayers' dollars and a very disproportionate response to the situation at hand.
Anyway, the man was arrested on suspicion of brandishing a firearm. My guess would be that the man did what I have done, at an airport, after retrieving my checked luggage in which I had a legally checked firearm. That would be that he opened his luggage, took out the firearm case (in the event it was a pistol) and then maybe opened the case to take a peek inside to assure his firearm had not been stolen in transit. If it was a rifle case, then maybe he opened it to do likewise. Would anyone really expect you o just retrieve your luggage, containing a firearm, and leave the airport without checking to see it was still secure, what with the amount of items stolen from luggage by baggage handlers and by TSA personnel! That would not be brandishing a weapon by any stretch of the imagination.
Now, when I do it, I try to wait until everyone else has left the baggage carousel area around me, or I move away to a spot with no one able to look into my case. I do not handle the weapon at all. My guess is that the man in question may have checked on his gun with someone standing nearby who saw it or that someone just saw the gun case and flipped out. Of course, that is merely a guess on my part. As unlikely as it would be, it is possible that the man took the gun out of its case and waved it around (which would be brandishing) while standing in the baggage area but as I said I think that very unlikely. Merely opening a case to check on its status would not be brandishing under any interpretation of any brandishing laws nor would mere possession of a gun inside of a gun case be brandishing the firearm.
I certainly would like to know more of the details of this case and maybe even see the video (you can rest assured that the baggage claim area is under constant video surveillance) of whatever it was that the man did that caused the other person to report him to police. My bet would be that if anyone should have been arrested it should have been the person who called this into the authorities and then maybe even the police official who decided to call in the bomb squad.
All the best,
Glenn B
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