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| To Keep and Arm Bears |
| 2003-07-17 |
| Airport security workers found a loaded handgun stuffed inside a brown teddy bear that a 10-year-old boy was carrying on a trip home after his family’s Florida vacation, authorities said Thursday. The FBI is investigating how the gun got inside the teddy bear. Don’t hold your breath. A Transportation Security Administration worker noticed the outline of a gun when the bear passed through an X-ray machine at Orlando International Airport on Saturday. I’m impressed he was awake enough to see it. The TSA found a loaded .22-caliber gun after the bear was opened. The boy’s family told investigators that the bear was a gift from a girl at the hotel where they stayed during their Orlando vacation. `She appeared at their hotel room door and offered them the bear,’ said Robert Johnson, a TSA spokesman in Washington. `The mother said it was OK and so the boy took it.’ No strange girls bearing gifts have ever showed up at my hotel room door. I’d remember. The Miami Herald reported that the gun had been concealed by cutting a half-inch hole at the bottom of the bear, and that the gun had been reported stolen in 1996 in California. Bet that gun has been hidden in the bear for years, somebody forgot about it. Maybe someone in the supposed strange girls family. Too bad you didn’t get her name. Johnson said the incident ``underscores the need to screen everyone and everything no matter how innocent the people or their belongings may appear.’’ The TSA will milk this for all it’s worth. The boy’s parents, Robert and Angela Barry of Grove City, Ohio, were questioned by FBI agents and released. From her home in suburban Columbus, Angela Barry said she didn’t want to talk about what happened until the FBI investigation was finished. ``I want every way possible for them to find out who did this,’’ she said. The FBI did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. They want to find Jimmy Hoffa to question him about the anthrax case first. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #3 Chuck, the story says that the gun was inserted into the bear through a half inch hole. Sounds like a baby automatic or one of those tiny revolvers, I forget the make. It would only add a few ounces. They don't say how big the bear is either. |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-7-17 8:45:43 PM |
| #2 So Teddy was packing heat. I am so sick of the FBI and the TSA hassling citizens who are not interested in crashing airliners into buildings. Have you heard there is a second amendment, and we have the right to bear arms? Regardless of the idiotic gun laws passed in the last hundred years, there is nothing in the Constituion that gives the Feds purview to infringe on my rights (and I'm not talking about hunting or target shooting!) I am sure the TSA and Gestapo like Homeland Defense will milk this for all it is worth. However, remember that if you fail to exercise your rights, they will soon vanish. Finally, if citizens had had weapons on 9/11, then there would have been 19 dead dirt bags and 3000 fewer casualties. Think about the next time someone wants to ban guns from schools or anywhere else - soft targets are easier to hit. Sorry about the mini-rant. |
| Posted by: Douglas De Bono 2003-7-17 8:03:05 PM |
| #1 And no body wondered that the freakin' bear weighed so much? The gun had to add, what, four pounds, and make a really hard and dense place in the soft, cuddly bear. |
| Posted by: Chuck 2003-7-17 7:51:05 PM |