TSA Photo
On Friday June 16th, second-year Patriots cornerback Jack Jones was arrested at Logan Airport in Boston. Catching a flight bound for Los Angeles, he was found during a routine TSA x-ray with two loaded pistols in his carry-on baggage. He was collared, booked into Massachusetts State Police-Logan Airport Barracks (a.k.a. F Troop, for you late-1960's TV afficionados), and is expected as of this writing to be arraigned in East Boston District Court in the coming days.
According to MSP, Jones has been charged with two counts each of a pile of gun possession charges. His bail was set at $50,000 and then lowered to $30,000, which he posted.
Incidentally, his arrest happened on the same day the Patriots offseason program ended. One of the things that all the players undoubtedly heard from team leadership before leaving the locker room was "Don't do anything stupid between now and training camp."
Well.
I'm not here to make a pro-2A poster child or upright citizen out of Jones. He's been arrested before, apparently for robbing a Panda Express. It's also probable that, even if he made it through Boston's security with his guns, they'd be illegal in L.A., too. I don't know too much about him beyond that. But all this is really beside the point. A story so high-profile is sure to get the old gun-control machinery rumbling again.
And it surely has. Reaction from media, both social and commercial, is typically swift. Everyone wants to be the first to publicly condemn him for being an idiot (a sentiment I find it hard to disagree with), and there's the usual flurry of love letters from corporate media and the anti-gun set about how our heroes at the TSA are keeping our skies safe and clear of those dangerous killing machines.
Across the nation in 2022, TSA found a total of 6,542 guns in carry-on luggage. That sounds like a lot, especially if you read the breathless media coverage when it happens but remember that this is out of a total of some 761 million passengers who passed through screening checkpoints last year. Just here at home, Logan airport carded 31 guns found in luggage in 2022, a number that the Boston Globe calls "alarming." Alarming? I suppose so, if your definition of alarming is finding 0.00017% of the approximately 18 million TSA-screened Logan passengers with a gun - none of whom, by the way, committed any crime at the airport other than simply having the gun itself. In any case, for those people who do get nabbed, life can become extremely difficult, extremely fast.
Hayley Leach, of Colorado, was arrested in 2018 for trying to check in her gun at Albany Airport (NY) for her return flight home. Her handgun was legal in Colorado, but she did not possess a permit from New York. While trying to do the right thing - declare and check her gun at the airport - she was hit with felony criminal charges, had to post bail, hire a lawyer, and then travel BACK to New York to face a judge and the possibility of years in prison.
Meredith Graves, medical student from Tennessee in town for a job interview, was visiting the 9/11 Memorial with her Kel-Tec .32 carry when she spotted the "no guns" signs. She headed to security and asked to check her gun while she visited and was promptly arrested. Incidentally, she was found to have a bag of white powder in her purse, for which then-mayor Michael Bloomberg (not exactly known for being a gun guy) publicly accused her of having cocaine. In reality it was powdered aspirin, a popular headache remedy in the South. Sounds like headache medicine would be useful after her ordeal at the hands of the New York legal system; she faced a minimum of 3-1/2 years in prison for her innocent mistake.
So much for trying to do the right thing.
Similar arrests happen at federal and state properties, museums, courthouses, highways and byways, and other places all across the country. People in legal possession of guns head to areas that are not gun-friendly and get bagged by the state apparatus. Shaneen Allen. Donna Marie Gracey. Justina Shealer.
When arrests are made and reported in the media, as in high-profile cases such as Jack Jones, public condemnation follows quickly, even from people who proclaim themselves to be pro-gun rights: "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes," and all that. They knew - or should have known - what the law is, so they're reaping the consequences of their actions and/or their ignorance. Too bad for them, right?
But is that really a fair assessment of fellow individuals in a free society? Does the statement "Well, that's what the law says" really end the debate... or does it just open a new one? As liberty-minded people, perhaps we should be asking whether such laws are appropriate to begin with.
It's difficult to quantify these things on a national level, but even the TSA admits that virtually all guns found in luggage are there either out of ignorance of the law or because the passenger "forgot" it was in there. Same thing goes for a vast majority of the gun-only arrests that take place in everyday life, when there is not another crime such as robbery being committed... simple gun possession is pretty much always a victimless incident with no criminal or malicious intent whatsoever. People just reasonably figure that since their driver's license is recognized in other states, and their marriage license is recognized in other states, then their gun license would be, too.
When they find a gun in luggage, TSA policy is to deny the passenger boarding (obviously) and to immediately notify local law enforcement. The TSA may also impose an administrative fine, depending on circumstances, of up to $14,950. In a very few places the passenger is allowed to either check their gun or hand it off to someone who is not flying. In most cases, however, or if the airport is located in a particularly gun-unfriendly area such as Massachusetts, New Jersey, or New York, the passenger will likely face life-altering criminal charges (usually felonies), loss of freedoms, more fines, the list goes on. People go to prison, people go bankrupt, families are destroyed... and for what? A mistake?
As a libertarian, I have a strong aversion to prosecuting people for victimless "crimes." Such are mala prohibita ("prohibited evil") - acts which are considered wrong simply because they have been declared illegal, and not because they are actually wrong in and of themselves.
Murder, rape, theft are all examples of crimes that entail force and the denial of the rights of other people and are therefore appropriately called crimes against those people. When there is no victim, however, it should be of no concern to the state. Of course, I argue the same regards government licenses of any kind, but we'll try to keep focused here.
In the case of possession of guns in airports and on planes (but also true of the wider world where guns are subject to blanket prohibition) if there is no criminal intent or criminal behavior on the part of the person possessing the guns (outside of the possession itself), then who has been harmed? What crime against persons, other than the one arbitrarily declared as a crime against the state, has been committed?
I would argue, none. Possession of an object by itself is not a crime. Anti-gun states, however, insist on considering the object itself to be surrogate for criminal intent.
In my ideal world the TSA wouldn't even exist. Besides their abysmal track record of missing, according to various sources, up to 96% of hidden weapons meant to test their screening techniques, they cannot claim to have stopped a single terrorist action in the 22 years of their existence and are regularly excoriated in the press for their "prostate check now, ask questions later" approach to the civil liberties of travelers. Besides all that, there is nothing that the TSA does now that couldn't be done, privately, by the airlines themselves. But that's a whole different set of opinion pieces.
Most of the country currently allows you to carry a gun, either by permit or without. Further, there are currently procedures by which you can legally transport guns across state lines. You can even fly with guns in your checked baggage. Massachusetts is just one of a few particularly egregious offenders when it comes to infringing on 2A rights, so if you're from here it's easy to get a biased view of the state of things. I get it, believe me.
The point, however, is that when it comes to possession of guns (and most other things) no government intervention should be required at all until an actual crime is committed, and simply possessing a piece of metal on your body is not the same as criminal intent. This is true for gun possession in airplanes, cars, city streets, federal buildings, and anywhere else you can think of, no matter what state you're in. National concealed-carry reciprocity would be a good intermediate step towards the abolition of gun licensing entirely in this country.
All that is, admittedly, a long way off given our current political climate. In the meantime, though, even in these staunchly anti-gun localities, why can't we focus on educating people instead of treating them as default criminals for simple mistakes? If a gun is stopped at a TSA checkpoint, why can't the Massachusetts State Trooper who is called pull out an information pamphlet instead of handcuffs?
It would require a fundamental shift in the way governments see people, from viewing us as subjects who need to be managed and told what not to do, to seeing us as free individuals with agency.
Speaking of agency, I hear Jack Jones might be looking for new employment later this year.