So where would one find a gun being used to stuff a bird a few weeks before Thanksgiving month? Naturally, at an airport serving the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area.
But just as some people mistakenly believe that turkeys can fly, Transportation Safety Administration agents at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport found that a woman flying to Port-Au-Prince in Haiti mistakenly believed a gun could fly if put inside a chicken — or it least it had a better shot at getting past TSA.
That didn’t fly and neither did she on her planned flight. TSA referred her to Customs and Border Protection.
A pun-filled (“The plot chickens...”) Monday post to TSA’s Instagram account — “Travel Tips and Dad Joke Hits” — told and showed the story of a handgun found inside a wrapped KikiriQuirch Baking Hen.
“We hate to beak it to you here, but stuffing a firearm in your holiday bird for travel is just a baste of time,” the post said. “This idea wasn’t even half-baked; it was raw, greasy, and obviously unsupervised.”
For proper non-poultry packing of pistols, other firearms and ammunition, check out the TSA.gov website.
“Every passenger bears the responsibility of knowing what the laws are on both sides of their journey if intending to travel with a gun,” TSA spokesperson Sari Koshetz said. “It can never be in your carry-on bag, and it may be illegal to transport in your checked bag as well.”
TSA said it had intercepted 700 guns this year at Florida airport checkpoints, a record for statewide gun confiscations, and 12 airports have reset their highs for guns taken at checkpoints. That includes all three South Florida airports.
But TSA says the state leader isn’t Miami International Airport (83, fourth most), Palm Beach International (28, seventh), or Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood (No. 2 at 120), but Orlando International Airport at 129.
This story was originally published November 08, 2022 9:53 AM.
