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Comment by raldi | Hacker News Reader

What kind of toy was it?

It was from League of Leagends (Sivir). It's not sharp or aerodynamic, just a "spinner" toy.

One of the vendors from the League convention I put on gave it to me as a token of thanks just before the event ended. I dropped it in my bag and forgot it until flying a few weeks later.

Bonus: My business partner was given the same one and the same thing happened at BUR. TSA asked if she wanted to mail it home, she said "toss it" and never heard another word!

Bonus 2: Cop asks me "who do you main?" (as in, what champion do you mainly play in LoL)

> Bonus: My business partner was given the same one and the same thing happened at BUR. TSA asked if she wanted to mail it home, she said "toss it" and never heard another word!

Free business idea!

UPS/FedEx/USPS packaging site at the end of the TSA line. When they say you can't take your cologne, knife, or toothbrush because it's too dangerous, you can immediately give it one of our helpful agents and they'll instead mail it your home!

TSA already have a deal with USPS in some airports.

Yep, and IIRC getting out of line to mail something (plus you have to track down postage stamps elsewhere again IIRC) means you have to then go through the whole thing again.

They have this option in Seattle already

They have this at many airports, but the prices are exorbitant. It was something like $10 to mail a swiss army knife home (vs. $15 to just replace it). They have a captive monopoly - there is one place you can mail it from, you can't step out of the terminal, and you have to decide immediately if you want to toss or mail - so they can charge whatever they want.

I'm having trouble picturing this. Could you upload a photo to imgur?

This[1] isn't the toy, but this is splash art of the character with good view of her weapon. It's based off of the chakram. The toy would have looked something like that.

[1]: http://static1.eclypsia.com/images/lol/champions/Sivir_Splas...

The worst part is I'm garbage with Sivir /s

Something like this I'm guessing:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rotatable-LOL-League-of-Legends-Sivi...

Yeah exactly that.

I can imagine that looking really scary through the x-ray but it's definitely not a weapon.

I'm not indignant about being stopped with it - just about being treated like a criminal instead of someone who just made a mistake. It was like my 30th flight of the year and I had (real) status with 2 airlines, and I was in a tiny little PreCheck screening wing with maybe 6 other passengers and 10 TSA at 5:00 AM.

It just seems like everything lined up for this to be a simple process that would have been easily determined to be inadvertent and not a danger to anyone, but I still got hosed!

As a child in the early 80s I had my bag searched due to some GI Joe toys, in this case knockoffs of missiles for some SAM launcher or somesuch. It's not just a modern TSA thing.

A standard-issue toy throwing star that every adult has on them when trying to get through security checkpoints.

Yep, the whole point for why pre-check exists is to allow frequent travelers who will always pass screening to get through the security clusterfuck faster. pre-check is for people that know how to travel and are willing to observe the rules.

A grown man carrying a "throwing-star" toy through pre-check SHOULD BE banned from this privilege and feel the scorn of other pre-check folks who just want to go through smoothly.

I hope you never find yourself on the other side of someone with the badge, even though these people don't even have the power to arrest me it was very scary feeling like they thought I was a criminal and nothing I could say could convince them otherwise.

"Did you know what you did was a felony? Did you know it's illegal to possess one of these?" - that's what I had to endure until the police arrived. For the crime of forgetting an item in my bag even existed after running a convention.

Of course it's my fault for not checking my bag before I left the house, if I was a weapons collector I'm sure I would've thought twice but I'm not.

Yes, think about what you're putting in your bag.

It is sad that TSA is just a bunch a phony-baloney security theater, but that's not going to change anytime soon. In the meantime please be careful about what you put in your bag so that you don't delay others. Airports are stressful enough already.

Thanks for the advice.

If happened in California, and since you at a LoL con it sounds like you were, the TSA officer was correct. Possessing throwing stars (shrunken) can get you up to a year in prison:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&gr...

Right, California is one of a handful of states with a definition for (and a ban on) throwing stars. A few hundred lines or so up the penal code from your link the definition can be found. What I had was a toy and did not meet the definition.

The police, who are local and have at least a basic understanding of California's laws, immediately knew it was not a throwing star. I'm not sure if TSA is allowed to touch weapons, but they refused to attempt to handle this item even after police arrived.

If this sounds stupid it's because it is. Someone threatened me with jail time and then came back to haunt me even after the police said there was no weapon. I retained an ex-TSA attorney, learned the laws and fought hard to understand the process.

In the end I just got on the phone with my case agent who quickly Nerfed my violation soon after I sent the email. Nothing that can be done about the PreCheck ban though.

> I'm not sure if TSA is allowed to touch weapons, but they refused to attempt to handle this item even after police arrived.

The TSA is not allowed to touch weapons, and the police are not allowed to perform the sorts of pat-downs that the TSA provides[0].

Incidentally, packing a gun in your checked luggage is supposedly the best way to make sure nothing ever gets stolen. If you pack a gun (even a flare gun will do), you are required to lock it with a lock for which only you hold the key, and the TSA cannot open it without calling the police in case they need to look inside. Not to mention, the penalties for them losing a piece of luggage that has a declared firearm inside it are way worse than the penalties for when they steal something from your luggage[1].

[0] Jurisdiction-dependent, of course - but police have to meet a much higher bar to pat people down than the TSA do.

[1] Which is to say, 'nothing', because there are essentially no penalties for TSA employees who are caught stealing, even repeatedly. It's absurd.

Reading how CA defines a shuriken, it doesn't sound like the toy qualifies (not intended to be thrown, assuming the edges aren't sharp):

> As used in this part, a "shuriken" means any instrument, without handles, consisting of a metal plate having three or more radiating points with one or more sharp edges and designed in the shape of a polygon, trefoil, cross, star, diamond, or other geometric shape, for use as a weapon for throwing.

Could maybe qualify as a replica weapon regardless?

The first time I read this I thought it was satire.

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