When a Gun Is Not a Gun

Whenever I think I've heard the ultimate in strangeness from the agents of the State, I run across yet another incident that cautions against succumbing to such premature finality.

The mess that our airports have become is hardly a secret. Even before the destruction of the World Trade Center, security procedures at airports did not inspire confidence in either the sense or the abilities of those charged with keeping flyers safe from criminals, saboteurs, and terrorists.

Air travelers were subjected to such "duh" questions as, "Did you pack your own bags?" and "Has anyone handed you a package?" and "Have you had your luggage with you at all times?" I'm sure such clever queries caught many an unwitting would-be terrorist off-guard: "No. Yes! Dang! Ya got me. I confess. My terrorist cell leader packed my suitcase. He didn't tell me what was in there, but I'm sure it's all good."

While such pointless interrogation is thankfully no longer de rigueur, the brilliance of other procedures and policies remains unproven.

A mother is asked to drink the breast milk she has pumped and bottled for her infant; not a sample on the arm, mind you, but the whole magilla. She doesn't explode.

A student with a jar of pond water collected for a school project is forced to drink it and becomes sick from the little nasties swimming around in there. But he doesn't explode, either.

Little girls are wanded. Women are strip-searched. Old men in wheelchairs are subjected to intense scrutiny. Prominent politicians are given the hairy eyeball. (Okay, okay: the latter example is merely just desserts.)

A Congressional Medal of Honor winner from World War II is given flack because his medal — signed by the President — "might be used as a weapon."

A college student is forbidden from flying because "security" officers do not like the title of the novel he is reading.

Tweezers and nail clippers and eyebrow curlers and pen knives and a plethora of other ordinary items are confiscated without compensation as "threats" to airline security.

Travelers are forbidden to travel anonymously or to carry any item that might actually be useful for self-defense, security personnel are magically transformed into "competent professionals" by becoming federal employees, and the airlines squeal for your tax dollars to bail them out of their financial doldrums.

When a British tourist — a grandmother — had the inch-long plastic toy gun confiscated from the GI Joe doll she purchased for her grandson, I thought those playful folks manning the checkpoints had reached the zenith of their loony fun. A brief story in the December, 2002, issue of NRA's First Freedom, however, must, I think, be in contention for top honors in this Absurdity Competition.

A man from Colorado had a "4-inch milk chocolate pistol wrapped in plastic wrap" in his luggage; a gift from his daughter. The screener said, "I don't care if it's chocolate, you're not taking a gun on the plane." Even the passenger eating the "barrel" did not satisfy the ever-vigilant security dweeb. No "gun parts" were permitted, either! Only after eating the rest of the "gun" was the man permitted past the checkpoint.

Now, don't you feel ever so much safer knowing this kind of diligence is to be found in our nation's airports?

For the moment, let's accept the screener's statements at face value and see where that leads us.

Let's see if I have this right: A chocolate gun is a kind of gun. Even if part of it is missing, it still consists of gun parts. Therefore both the whole chocolate gun and/or its components are potential threats and thus cannot be allowed on an airplane.

Hmm. Maybe there's potential here. After all, this screener is a representative of the State, and we all should follow the lead of our betters, right?

Okay. A GI Joe doll's gun is treated like a real gun and prohibited. A chocolate gun is treated like a real gun and prohibited. I bet any toy gun would be treated like a real gun and verboten.

Instead of subjecting myself to endless hours of teaching and grading and travel to earn my living, I could get some chocolate coins and treat those like real money. Better yet, I have a three-inch stack of play money from my childhood sitting on one of my bookshelves. "Toy gun" equivalent to "real gun," therefore "play money" equivalent to "real money." Right?

Wow! I've got quite a few hundred-thousand dollar bills in there. I'm rich! I'm rich!

And if I run out, heck, I can just draw some bills on scraps of paper, just like those students who got in trouble for drawing guns and tanks and bombs. Or, if an extended finger and a raised thumb can get a student expelled for pointing a "gun," I'll just pretend to hand the cashier at the electronics store enough money to buy that sixty-inch plasma TV monitor I've drooled over. And surely the State will treat these examples as the equivalent of real money and accept them when I pay my taxes...

If I get a doll house, can I get a realtor to sell it for me? But I might be assessed property taxes if I do that...

A Lexus sure would be nice to own and drive. I'm sure I could find a toy version if I looked a bit. Or a picture in a magazine. ' Course, I'll need to get a license for it. And a parking sticker. Hmm. Wonder how much the car dealer will give me for it as a trade-in?

Can I heat my house if someone gives me a toy tree? If someone gets a Britney Spears doll, can he have sex with her? Marry her? Have her bear his children? Divorce her and ask for alimony?

Oh-oh! The Prez is prepping for a war in Iraq. Maybe we could just manufacture a whole bunch of those toy soldiers and plastic weapons that cause airport screeners conniption fits and send the li'l green guys into Iraq to fight and die and take over the country! Boy. Think of the savings.

But, of course, there is no such thing as a "gun composed of chocolate." What does exist is chocolate — a kind of "candy" — that is shaped like a gun.

Nor is there such a thing as a "gun that is a toy." What does exist is a toy that looks like and perhaps mimics a gun.

Sadly, as well (and with apologies to "Babes in Toyland"), there are no "soldiers that are toys." What does exist are toys shaped like — that look like — soldiers.

The people in airports or government buildings or schools who act as though mere similarity of appearance creates an essential equivalence of identity — who forget which is really the noun and which the adjective in "chocolate gun" — are in danger of slipping into a self-destructive fantasy.

Conceptual illiterates confuse a word — an arbitrary label — with the concept that word represents. They forget that a word can label multiple different concepts — e.g., "lie": to tell a falsehood or to place oneself on the floor — and that one concept may have multiple labels, i.e., words, i.e., synonyms, e.g., police, pig, cop, fuzz.

These intellectually challenged idiots are unaware that the meaning of a concept is not whatever they happen to "believe" it is. The meaning of a concept is what — in reality — is grouped/organized/classified/categorized by that concept. Those (material or nonmaterial) things are what are important; are what we (should) try to understand and discuss.

Our (valid) concepts have to fit reality. Reality does not have to fit our (invalid) concepts.

Such ignorant foolishness would be laughably amusing if committed by a private citizen or even by a private business. You could always avoid the person or take your business elsewhere.

But when such asinine ideas and the tyrannical policies they engender are imposed and administered at the point of a gun, any potential humor the situation might otherwise contain evaporates.

Coercively enforced irrationality is a threat not only to your freedom but to your life, as well. And if the agents of the State come after you for protesting their immorality, you can bet that life that they won't be armed with chocolate guns.

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See Russ Madden's articles, short stories, novel excerpts, and items of interest to Objectivists, libertarians, and sci-fi fans at http://home.earthlink.net/~rdmadden/webdocs/.

"I think a good gift for the President would be a chocolate revolver. and since he is so busy, you'd probably have to run up to him real quick and give it to him."

"Deep Thoughts"
Jack Handy

Excellent article! We fly between Houston, Los Angeles, and Denver a lot, and all the silly things they were doing in the name of air safety was such a joke. Still is pretty silly!

Recently when the screener jobs became government jobs, it did improve though, in Ontario Calif. We noticed some improvement. It was much more professional proceedure, smoother and faster. And the new people are POLITE! That is a shocker!

You're right, I missed it. Although a bump would have drawn me in as easily.

I wish some tinhorn airport yahoo would try this mess on me so I could laugh in his face, and yell about what a moron he is for not being able to tell a gun from chocolate, all the while spitting all over him.

When I'm done I'll hike back to the ticket counter and threaten to demand my money back because some power monkey won't let me bring chocolate on the plane.

If the airline wants to keep my mopney, they'll need to escort me past the drooling moron WITH my chocolate.

Wow. Amazing article.

A friend of mine flew to Maine to visit his family a few months ago.
He is into aggressive inline skating, and he has a type of shoes called "Soaps." Soaps have a reinforced plastic plate in the middle of the bottom to allow grinding on rails or whatever you can find.
When he arrived at the airport, the security personnel wouldn't allow him to wear his shoes on the aircraft. The were afraid that the plastic shoes might be plastic explosive I guess. Either way, he now drives. The airline industry is in need of our tax dollars because no one wants to fly. Not because of 9-11-01, but because you must give up your rights as an American citizen just to board the aircraft.

In SLC, I was recently asked, "Is it possible someone put something in your luggage without your knowledge?"
I asked, "If it was without my knowledge, how would I know about it?"
Answer!!!! "That is why we ask."

Only after eating the rest of the "gun" was the man permitted past the checkpoint.

I'm surprised that they let him on then. After all ... he was obviously carrying a gun inside him.

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