No Bullets in the Courthouse!!!

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EBorraga

EBorraga

Passed Away July 17, 2022
In Memoriam
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
Messages
4,049
Location
Louisville, KY
Had an very interesting morning. I volunteered to take a co-worker to court this morning, as he has no car. I decided I would go in with him and see what goes on in court. Upon entering the courthouse, there is a metal detector. As I put all my things in the little basket, I realize I have a bullet pen in my pocket. The 5 sheriff's there freaked out. They were pretty sure it was live ammo. After a lot of explanation they made me take it back to my car. When I came back in and did the whole routine again, they noticed this time I had a small bag full of pills. The Sheriff was pretty pissed until I told him that they were normal med's I take because of a transplant.

After 5 hour's of seeing the city's finest citizen's get sentenced for some of the craziest charges I've heard of, the same sheriff asks me for a business card. He now wants to buy 3 bullet pens in Camo. Was one crazy morning.
 
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On an Australian forum I belong to, one member was detained and moved to five different security facilities before someone with an ounce of brains determined his cartridge pen was not a threat.
A little power can often translate into some big......uh....'boys'.
 
EBorraga said:
After 5 hour's of seeing the city's finest citizen's get sentenced for some of the craziest charges I've heard of, the same sheriff asks me for a business card. He now wants to buy 3 bullet pens in Camo. Was one crazy morning.
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That's a great story -- contrat's on the good lead. It's been my exerience that if you can get known in a fraternal group like this, there will likely be a never ending supply of leads...
 
You might get a kick out of the courthouse in Prince George's County, MD.
I have to use 2 canes to walk. One time I had to go to the court as a witness. When I was going to go through the security gate, I was told I would have to put my canes on the conveyer belt. i sat down and handed my canes to the deputy. They went through the x-ray device and it was "discovered" that the handles of my 2 Harvy canes (one was a horses head, the other an elephants head) were attached with threaded rods.
The deputy then took a minute to unscrew on of the handles, and saw a threaded rod ~ 3/4" long, sticking out of the shaft. The deputy told me I could not take my canes into the courthouse. i said "Okay" and lowered myself to the floor and began to slide across the floor to the elevator.
Needless to say, my canes were quickly returned for my use.
 
DO NOT try to take a bullet pen or even a bullet key chain (with keys attached through a hole drilled through the cartridge) to the Statue of Liberty!

I helped herd a group of teens from our church on a daytrip to NYC. Sure enough, the smart (and heavily armed) guards at the entrance took away not only my bullet pen, but also one I had made for another leader. Even after we demonstrated that they were pens!

THen, I hear one of my teens yelling "hey give me back my keys" - they confiscated the kids KEYRING I had made for him out of a 38 special. I drilled a hole through the cartridge and removed the primer. It was a keyring. We had to argue with them just to get the boys keys back to his car and his house. I was threatened with arrest for "causing a disturbance" - and so was my young ward!

I wonder who kept my two pens?

I made up for Peter's loss the next Sunday when I gave him a .30-06 keychain to replace the .38.

Sometimes logic has no role in life.
 
Ernie, The guy in the building next door to my shop had to go to court in Jackson, he had a tiny pen knife maybe 2 inches long it was an old Case Peanut, hardly could be classed as a weapon,. Any way he put it in the basket and went through the metal detector and then was told he couldn't take that knife into the courthouse, he asked the guard if he could leave it there since he was late for a trial, the guard said no he would have to take it back to his car, he tried to explain that his car was about 3 or 4 blocks away, Tough luck was the guard answer, so he said can I throw it in the garbage Nope can't do that either, so he had to take the knife back to his car, got back and into the court room in time to hear the judge issue a bench warrant for him for failure to appear. Fortunately the Judge had a brain and rescinded the warrant. When the heck are these IDIOTS going to start using common sense, can it really be that hard. Here in Adamsville they still let kids carry pocket knifes to school, they just aren't allowed to show them or open them on campus other than in Agriculture class.
 
One of my first customers bought one for her husband. He's an engineer and travels to powerplants for inspection and such. He calls it his go-to-jail pen. Hasn't lost it to date.

Gotta love those wonderful "officials" looking out for our well being!
 
I went to court as a witness for a friend of mine who was arrested for carrying a kubaton. I brought in my 5 D-Cell mag-lite and an acrylic letter opener, both of which was allowed by security into the courtroom. I set up a 3/4" x 6" pine board and asked the prosecutor to break it with the "Dangerous weapon" (kubaton) that my friend was carrying and he could not. I handed him the flashlight and asked him to break the board and he did so with ease. I also pulled out the letter opener whick I had purchased brand new and left it in the packaging and demonstrated how it could puncture the board with ease. In the eyes of the court, neither the letter opener or the flashlight were considered dangerous even though the could do much more damage. My friend ended up being convicted and he had to pay a heavy fine.

2 years later the company that made the letter openers stopped selling them because they were being used more as weapons than for what they were "intended" for :wink::wink:

Good thing I got a few before there were no more.
 
When did kubatons become illegal? I thought they were legal to carry but illegal to use unless you have been trained for them.
 
Before several ask, check this site ...

The Kubotan (sometimes erroneously spelled as Kubaton or Kobutan) self-defense keychain is a close-quarter self-defense weapon developed by Takayuki Kubota. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubotan

In the hands of a properly trained individual these devices can be deadly.
 
well, we took our freedom for granted then some crazy terrorists come and ruin for us. those security people you got stopped by unfortunately don't get paid much perhaps, and there are under so much scrutiny that common sense don't matter to them they have to do what they are told. I know it doesn't make sense, but they have to do it.
I wear BAHA hearing aid (Bone Anchored Hearing aid) that the abutment (a little blue jean type button is implanted into my skull) at one of the airports the TSA guy had me to take it out and the in the ear hearing aid that I wear in the right ear and I am totally deaf in the left so if i take out the hearing aid in the right it's very hard for me to hear anything. then the idiot sends it through the X Ray and when i am on the other side of the X Ray he starts talking to me and I keep telling him that I can't hear what he was telling me. So we went at it for good while 'til I asked him to call his supervisor. Once they gave me back my Hearing aids the idiot remembered that he was not supposed to have me to take them off. go figure.
 
What an idiot. I'm sure you are not the first person to pass through wearing hearing aids. It makes me wonder what would happen if a real threat was involved.
 
jaeger said:
What an idiot. I'm sure you are not the first person to pass through wearing hearing aids. It makes me wonder what would happen if a real threat was involved.
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nothing the deaf people are at disadvantage, because the amplification of the blow up would probably puncture our ear drums, and then since we can no longer hear we'll be the first one killed.that's the fact. I can't be around any shooting without the heavy duty ear protection. Oh, well. He who created us is the only protector.
 
Spoken like good hard working regular citizens

I read with a smile many of our collective experiences. Working in a related field, I have both observed and heard of experiences that on their face, seem even more outlandish than those related here.

Sadly, I have also had the opportunity to witness the destruction that seemingly innocuous objects, or weapons "so small that they couldn't possibly pose a threat" can do in the hands of the small percentage of humans that don't think like regular good hard working people do. We should remember that our courthouses contain not only the good honest folks doing their civic duty, but also on occasion, the truly evil amongst us.

Common sense is a wonderful thing. Sadly, it doesn't happen nearly as commonly as one would hope. That said, the folks that are responsible for the security of our courthouses (and all of the regular folks that for one reason or another find themselves within the courthouses) are often paid little more than minimum wage, provided minimal training, and are responsible for making sure that the few truly evil people out there aren't able to smuggle something that might kill you or me, into the building. Not to mention dealing with the complaints of people wondering why that other guy got to bring in his [fill in the blank] and he didn't.

The operating rules that seem to be rubbing us the wrong way are little different than the signs in a baseball stadium that warn of baseballs leaving the playing field. Those signs are there because somebody that wasn't paying attention got hit with a ball and won an unbeleivably large sum of money because there wasn't a sign to tell him that he should pay attention.

I guess I have a little different persepctive on the matter. It's absolutely a pain in the butt. But then, I've also seen a gun that was cleverly disguised as a cell phone. Fortunately, the guy that had it wasn't provided the opportunity to kill me that day.

Merely another perspective.

Sam
 
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I know of a deputy sheriff at the Marion County City/County building with one heck of a big knife collection. One of which was my dads.:mad:
 
wolftat said:
When did kubatons become illegal? I thought they were legal to carry but illegal to use unless you have been trained for them.
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It all depends on the prosecutor. In this case they defined it as a deadly weapon because he had attached to his belt with a chain like on a truckers wallet. The officer called it as a bludgeon device and under Connecticut statute that is a deadly weapon. The court agreed. He now carries a 5 cell mag-lite and an acrylic letter opener.
 
junosdad said:
Sadly, I have also had the opportunity to witness the destruction that seemingly innocuous objects, or weapons "so small that they couldn't possibly pose a threat" can do in the hands of the small percentage of humans that don't think like regular good hard working people do. We should remember that our courthouses contain not only the good honest folks doing their civic duty, but also on occasion, the truly evil amongst us.
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Good point,

We should also remember that the 9-11 hijackers had nothing more than box-cutters IIRC.
 
wolftat said:
Funny thing is that almost any pen will do about the same thing as a Kubaton.
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I agree. That's why I brought the flashlight and letter opener. A simple car key can inflict a LOT of damage if used properly. This was a rookie and I think he wanted to be officer of the year so he went by the letter of the law. Come to think of it the prosecutor was new and he had political ambitions. Don't think either one of them ever got far.
 
we have had pens taken by customs from our military on their way home, I don't make any more bullet pens to send overseas but several of our woodturners still do, we just keep our fingers crossed they get them home
 
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