Traveling with Firearms
Traveling with firearms is a fascinating experience.
First, you need some interesting equipment. Your firearms have to be completely contained in a hard sided case, with appropriate latching mechanisms, and locks. Your firearms must be unloaded. Even if you don’t have a round in the chamber, a magazine in the pistol with ammo in it constitutes a loaded firearm. Given this, I have chosen to travel with unloaded magazines. But you can have ammunition in the same case as the firearms. The ammo has to in a box that separates the cartridges so they are not touching each other. All of this is detailed by your airline as well as by the TSA.
Here’s what that looks like:
A Pelican Vault
Pelican Vault with two pistols
Pelican Vault with ABUS padlocks
Now, once you’ve got that, and you are ready to travel, you have to check in with your airline with a specialty item. At the airport, the airline will have a special line for checking speciality items, pets, etc. You have to declare to the agent that you have firearms, open your case for the agent to see them, and sign a declaration that they are unloaded. Once that is done, you will take your firearms case to TSA. This process takes about 30 minutes at SeaTac.
TSA will have a special location for you to check your firearms with them after you are done with the airline. At SeaTac this is the same location where oversize luggage, like golf clubs, get dropped off. There, you will open the case again and a TSA officer will inspect everything. And, for some reason, they swab the whole case for explosives. You have to verbally declare that the firearms are unloaded, the TSA person checks your signed declaration and then you lock the case and hand it off to TSA. That’s kinda nerve wracking since I don’t ever leave my firearms unsupervised except at home in the gun safe.
When you get to your destination and have picked up all your other luggage (if need be), then you go to the airline’s baggage services office. This time I was flying with Delta, who has a policy that the case must be zip tied and escorted by airport police. A very nice police officer checked my identification at the destination, handed over my case and told me about the Delta policy. We joked a bit about whether he could cut off the zip tie for me (he can’t) and then I headed off to my hotel.
Zip tied Pelican Vault
Once I got to my hotel, I had a dilemma. To make life easier, my EDC knife was also in the case. Which I needed to cut the zip tie. Fortunately, a very nice hotel clerk went and found a pair of scissors for me. All set.
And now I’m in Phoenix, ready for the Gun Rights Policy Conference. That starts tonight with an opening reception. And I’m able to exercise my fundamental rights to self-defense and to keep and bear arms. Not as difficult as I thought, but not as easy as it could be.
Last but not least, you need to safeguard things in your hotel room. For that, I have a Vaultek Lifepod, the Pelican Vault, 2 ABUS padlocks, and a cable to secure everything to something sturdy. Like this
Hotel room security setup
Here’s the gear I have for firearms travel.
Pelican Vault V200 – I cut the foam myself
2 ABUS 8840C padlocks, keyed separately
Make sure that you know the laws of the destination you are traveling to, the rules that your airline has for traveling with firearms, and TSA rules. Goofing on anyone of those can land you in prison. So, don’t do it if you don’t know the rules and are prepared to follow them.
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