A soldier returning from Afghanistan had his nail clippers confiscated even though he was traveling with more than 200 other soldiers who were allowed to board with assault rifles, pistols and machine guns.
Now, I'm not sure how they do things these days, but every time I went through an airport as a member of a military unit, I always bypassed the normal security checkpoints (of course, this was before 9/11).
But what I want to know is why the commanding officer of the unit allowed personal property of his men to be confiscated? It's my opinion that the CO and the two most senior enlisted men should have been at the checkpoint. The BtryGy (or Army equivalent) should have been there anyway, and as soon as anything was getting confiscated, he should have stopped the line, gotten the CO, and then they should have continued to deplane unmolested.
Because I'm sure that the CO's chain of command to the CinC is a bit shorter than a rent-a-security-guard's.
And if the TSA dumbass doesn't think you can take over a plane with an unloaded M16, he's obviously never had a horizontal butt-stroke enthusiastically applied to his head.
And to get a bit off-topic, let's just assume that one of the soldiers on board did decide to try to take over the plane. He'd have trouble because of the 200 other similarly-armed folks aboard (or at least from the ammo techs). Just another reason to carry everywhere.
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