Wednesday, July 3, 2013

TSA's New Instagram Account Shows America The Terrifying Things They Take From Flyers

Posted By on Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 4:41 PM

In late June, the Transportation Security Administration started an Instagram account in which they post images of the weirdest, wackiest, weapon-iest prohibited things that they pull out of the luggage of screened air travelers.

And yes, that does exclude things that people tend to use for personal, sexual gratification. However, that does mean that guns, knives, stun guns, fireworks — basically, anything that's designed to explode or cut things — is fair game.

What's really interesting is when one realizes that there ARE such as gun-knives — and that there are people who think they're okay to bring in their carry-on:

I honestly didnt think this was a real thing until now.
  • blog.TSA.gov
  • I honestly didn't think this was a real thing until now.

For what it's worth, the TSA nailed the caption: "The perfect #knife to bring to a #gunfight was discovered in a carry-on bag at #Cleveland #Hopkins #airport"

Now, astute readers will note that the image above was linked from blog.tsa.gov, not the TSA Instagram — that's because (along with the fact that I didn't feel like fighting with Instagram to embed the image) blog.tsa.gov gives you the story behind the photos, along with exact metrics of what's been confiscated.

For instance, from June 21-27, 44 guns were pulled from the luggage of passengers throughout the country.

Yes, there were that many people who either didn't know (or worse, didn't care) that they weren't supposed to take weapons onto airplanes in this day and age.

So thanks, TSA — not just for the friendliest hands in the sky, but for helping us realize that yes, our fellow Americans are still that stupid.

[h/t: John de Dios, via Petapixel]

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