Guns, Chain Saws Seized from Air Passengers
Thu Aug 28, 8:30 AM ET Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. airport baggage screeners, displaying seized chain saws, machetes and knives, warned travelers to check their luggage for offensive objects before boarding a flight.
Officials of the Transport Security Administration, speaking ahead of this weekend's Labor Day holiday -- a busy travel time -- said that since February 2002 more than 7.5 million prohibited items had been seized.
They included 50,000 box cutters -- a weapon said to be used by the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers -- and 1,437 firearms as well as 2.3 million knives.
The TSA officials told a news conference most people with such items in their bags intended no malice but advised passengers to consult the Web site
www.tsatraveltips.usa for advice on what to leave behind when making a trip.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks screeners have confiscated seemingly harmless items like nail clippers and cigarette lighters from passengers.
But some carry more obviously dangerous items. Chain saws, a weed cutting machine, hand saws and machetes, steak knives, bottles of camping stove fuel and perfume bottles shaped like hand grenades were among items displayed as a sample of objects seized at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
While some carry-on items may have been innocent -- a hockey stick or a child's plastic sword -- other discoveries by TSA have yielded razor blades in tennis shoes and a bayonet hidden in a hollowed-out artificial leg.
