Another of those cases where you have to double check to see if the calendar has somehow rolled over to April 1st. It seems, more and more, that real life is resembling stories which more properly belong in The Onion.
A Canadian tourist flying home from the UK was prevented from bringing an ornament he had bought at a visit to the Royal Signals museum onto his flight- packed in his luggage- because the figure was of a soldier holding a tiny, three inch long resin gun.
As he passed through the security checkpoint he was stopped by a security officer who then contacted his supervisor-
'My wife asked for a "reality check", explaining how this offending piece of sculptured moulding is a 9 inch painted model with a moulded and painted rifle that is part of the figure.
'The supervisor was confident within the surety of the regulations and said a "firearm" is a firearm and cannot pass.
In fact, a spokeswoman for the airport said, "Items including firearms and items with the appearance of firearms are prohibited."
What kind of world do we live in where an ornament of a soldier holding a gun is prohibited? Surely the correct course of action would be for the airport to admit their mistake and announce that this was an isolated case of an official taking things more than a tad too literally. It's clearly not a real weapon, it clearly cannot be modified to function as a real weapon and it's clearly preposterous to anyone with even a hint of common-sense that a three inch long piece of resin on a statue constitutes "the appearance of a firearm"- what's he going to do- pretend that it's a real assault rifle and take over the plane?
I actually feel less safe knowing that these people are in charge of airport security.
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