Flying with firearms today: Despite tightened security, you can still travel by air with your firearms. Knowledge of the right procedures is the ticket to success

Guns Magazine, May, 2002 by Dan Peterson

Three weeks after the September 11 attacks, I had occasion to fly out of Washington D.C.'s Dulles International Airport. Yep, that's the airport from which American Flight 77 was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. I was trying to make a 6:20 a.m. flight, and the scene at Dulles at 4:30 in the morning was already a mess.

Hundreds of people wearily fidgeted in line to go through security. Because of hastily improvised measures after the attack, security personnel were confiscating tweezers, clippers, nail files, disposable razors anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon.

Hanging Around With A 12-Gauge

But there I was, waiting in line for over an hour at the Continental ticket counter, with my new side-by-side 12-gauge shotgun in hand (unloaded, cased and locked, of course). My intention was to check it through as part of my baggage, which was perfectly legal. Still, I wondered if any of the security personnel or National Guardsmen with their M-16s would be sufficiently curious to ask me why I had a gun in the airport. Nobody did.

For months I had been planning this Texas business trip, which also happened to include an afternoon of skeet shooting. I was looking forward to working out a bit on the skeet fields to get accustomed to the new gun. My performance a few weeks earlier in the dove fields proved that a little practice wouldn't hurt, to say the least.

When the dust had settled after the attacks, though, the thought occurred to me: Is taking a gun on the airlines a good idea right now? I could get a free loaner at the skeet field. That would be easier and less hassle, so maybe I should just forget the idea of bringing mine along, and....

But wait, isn't this America? The land of the free? And isn't our right to keep and bear arms, openly and proudly, one of our most important freedoms? And aren't our-freedoms, and the strength resulting from them, what the terrorists hate about us? And don't they want to scare us into giving up our freedoms?

It didn't take long for me to decide to go ahead and take my shotgun along. As things turned out, checking the gun turned out to be no problem at all. If you want to do the same, the rules are pretty simple. Here's how to do it.

Rules For Checking Your Guns

Because the rules are based on federal law, they're similar for most of the airlines, though some add a few twists of their own. The rules that follow are for domestic flights only. Taking a firearm into another country has its own set of rules and problems, and may even be prohibited.

Let's start with the obvious. It's a federal felony to try to take any type of firearm past the airport security checkpoint or onto a commercial airplane. You knew that already. It's also against the law to have a loaded gun in your checked baggage. But you weren't going to do that anyway, right? Right.

The basic requirements to check an unloaded gun under federal law are remarkably few. First, you must "declare" to the airline before checking the baggage that the firearm is unloaded. At the ticket counter check-in, simply tell the airline ticket agent that you would like to declare a firearm as part of your checked baggage. Generally, the airline personnel will then escort you to a more private area. You open the case, show them that the gun is unloaded, and sign a written declaration that the firearm is unloaded. This declaration (often a little tag on a string) is attached to the trigger guard of the gun, you relock the case, and keep the key on your person. The gun case then goes onto the plane like other checked bags.

Second, under federal law the firearm must be "carried in a container the [airline] considers appropriate for air transportation."

Third, any firearm "other than a shotgun, rifle, or other firearm normally fired from the shoulder position" (that is, a handgun) must be in locked baggage and "only the passenger checking the baggage retains the key or combination." Finally, the baggage must be carried in an area, other than the flight crew compartment, that is inaccessible to passengers. The airline, of course, attends to that.

Airline Policies Vary

I looked at the websites of 10 airlines to see what their policies were regarding firearms in checked baggage. The 10 airlines were American, America West, Continental, Delta, Frontier, Northwest, Southwest, TWA, United and USAirways. There are some differences, so check with your airline before you fly. Given the attention being focused on airline security, the rules also could change between the time I am writing these words and when you are reading them. It's important to know the specifics for your airline.

Even though federal law requires only that handguns be in locked containers, some (but not all) of the airlines have policies that state that all firearms, including long guns, must be in locked containers. American and. Southwest, for example, require locks only on handgun containers. Continental, Frontier and TWA, on the other hand, require that all firearms be in locked containers. I'd lock 'em up regardless of whether the airline requires it.