So when you hear,
"I know weapons, I was in the military."
Doesn't really mean much.
Exactly! I wish I had a nickel for every time that I heard that.
They may know the weapons that they trained with but not all firearms.
After the Concealed Carry Law passed in my state, I read a number of times on a forum about the LEOs confiscating the 1911s that drivers were carrying for "officer safety."
I'm glad that didn't happen to me. A large number of the posts that I read on the forum talked about the LEOs thinking that the safety on the 1911 was a de-cocking lever while trying to make the pistol safe.
I had to do quite a bit of traveling for my former employer at one time. Prior to the Minneapolis airport getting the fancy scanning machines I had to accompany Ahmed carrying my luggage with a declared revolver in it to a table with a TSA screener.
Ahmed couldn't speak English. The TSA screener would look at me and ask what this was about.
I explained to him that I had declared a firearm in my checked luggage.
He would then open the luggage and the case that the revolver was in. Some of you probably know what happened next.
Rather than opening the cylinder to check if the revolver was loaded the TSA screener would point the muzzle at his face to see if he could see the bullets in the chamber.
I didn't know whether to laugh or say WTF are you doing? So I put on my best poker face.
It was probably better to not ask questions or make comments as that gets you too much unwanted attention.
Regardless, I did ask one screener why he didn't open the cylinder. His reply was, "we are not allowed to do that. this is the way we are trained to see if it's loaded."
This happened every time that I traveled to that airport.