"Can cause trouble" is a vast understatement. I took a trip to Bermuda
on Ocean Star, the schooner Ocean Navigator magazine used to operate.
We had a spud gun on board (hunks of PVC pipe and a sparker to ignite
WD-40 fumes - v. neat toy!) and the captain was very, very, very
specific about "don't even mention its existance" while on the island.
I exchanged e-mail with an Japanese Baba-L reader who merely shifted his
boat from one marina to another and had a host of problems, with
officialdom, over his flare gun.

I spent an afternoon on a pistol range with a friend. He brought a
range of handguns including a .22 "Colt .45" replica, a few 9 mm
automatics (including Glocks), and a pair of .45 automatic (one a near
stock military M1911 and the other hotted up with a laser sights, trick
grips, and all manner of gunsmithing to make it more accurate). Long
story short, although I shot passibly well in my military
qualifications, on that afternoon, with plenty of time to think about my
tasks, electronic earmuffs, nobody else on the range, and some good
instruction from my friend, I spent more time scaring the heck out of
the target stand than ventilating the targets. Consider this:, it's not
uncommon for an inexperienced gun owner or someone in their household to
wind up at the wrong end of their own weapon. Finally, remember the
cardinal rules of gun handling: never point a loaded gun at anything you
don't plan to kill; all guns are loaded.

Short and simple: it ain't worth it unless a) you're ready to be treated
as a near criminal by officialdom and b) you're going invest serious
time in training to come to speed and then continue that training
regularly. Shooting up the neighborhood in the name of maintaining
proficiency is generally not welcomed by most locals. Neither is
tossing a molotov cocktail in an (ostensible) fishing boat... You're
the stranger, they're the locals. You're wrong, they're right.

It's far better to think about a) how to not be in harm's way (much of
that is simple urban "take a bite outta crime" common sense) and b) how
to get out of harm's way without things that will have you branded by
officialdom as a potential troublemaker. AFAIK, baseball bats don't
arouse the ire of customs and immigration and chances are they won't
look to see if the bat's been ...ah... augmented with extra ballast, for
example.

Cheers,
   Rick Emerson

van ford wrote:

>Tom,
>
>You didn't invite them to have a gas cocktail? I'm sure that they would have
>liked that. Even if you had missed it might have scared the hell out of them
>enough to back off. I know that it is rare, but that is one of the things
>that makes me want to have a firearm on board and yet I know that it can
>cause trouble at check in.
>
>
>

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Received on Fri May 12 05:20:30 2006