I don't understand the point of this anti-gun article/exercise

No questions asked: 5 one-way flights with a gun – just like airport shooter Esteban Santiago

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Dave Hyde Contact Reporter Sun Sentinel Columnist

It started with a normal exchange at a common check-in counter before a typical flight at Fort Lauderdale’s airport:

“I have an unloaded firearm in a locked case to declare,” I said.

The ticket agent matter-of-factly asked for identification and typed on her computer.

“To Chicago,” she said.

And so began a trip to five cities on five airlines using five one-way tickets. It ended three days and 4,274 miles later with the same padlocked case, containing the same unloaded handgun, sitting on a stopped luggage carousel at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. And sitting. With no one around. For anyone to take.

This is a story about flying around America legally with a Walther 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, the same kind of gun Esteban Santiago checked in a similarly locked case on a one-way flight into Fort Lauderdale in January, before he killed five people and wounded six in the airport after retrieving his gun upon landing.

I set out to see how Santiago got onto the plane. How easy was it for him to check a gun — with no other luggage — and fly across the country? And did the Fort Lauderdale shooting bring any change in how it’s done?

In taking the Second Amendment for a test flight, I found:

Two of the five airlines I flew returned the gun case to me by leaving it in the luggage area, untended and unnoticed — fully in line with the law. Airlines are free to follow starkly different policies on how they handle firearms.
No one questioned that I was flying on only one-way tickets with only a gun, just as no one questioned Esteban Santiago.
Although I was traveling with a concealed-carry permit, no one asked to see it.
Exactly how many people check guns on planes is a secret to the public. The Transportation Security Administration says it doesn’t track the number. Only the airlines know, and they won’t divulge it

In short, flying with guns is as much a part of travel as mileage points and middle seats. No one flinches if everything is in order. Anyone in your airport could be flying with a gun just as Santiago did.

This time, it was me. ...

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About this story

Before Esteban Santiago shot and killed five people in the Fort Lauderdale airport, he flew here on a one-way ticket from Alaska, checking nothing but his gun case.

The Sun Sentinel decided to find out how easy that was.

For three days, our reporter traveled around the country with a semi-automatic handgun, flying entirely on one-way tickets and checking only a gun.

In some cases, we packed the gun inside a suitcase, as most gun owners do when they travel. In others, we checked only the gun case, the way Santiago did.

The trip involved three months of preparation and research into gun laws and airline policies to ensure that we followed all laws. Our reporter, who had never owned a gun, bought one legally at a gun shop, completed training for a concealed-carry permit, locked the unloaded gun in a case and checked the case properly for all flights.

We packed ammunition in the case, as allowed by law — and as Santiago did — but we packed shotgun shells that did not fit the handgun. If something went wrong, the gun could not be fired.

The trip included five airlines and five airports around the country, in order to explore whether the region or airline made a difference. On the advice of our attorneys, we avoided states with particularly tough handgun laws, including New York and California.

With the trip completed, the Sun Sentinel plans to donate the 9 mm handgun to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.

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Couldn't anyone walk into that non-TSA security area with a gun anyway? Why do the flights? It's not like they're letting people fly on a plane with a gun in a case at their feet. Isn't the real danger allowing non-flyers, who haven't been through the TSA gate, in the area?

For there to be perfect security inside the airport, the person flying would have to hand over his keys to the case to an airline employee, and not get it back until he walks out the destination airport door. Also anyone coming in the airport to help with luggage, etc. would have to go the TSA.

If we reach that point, I guess these guys would spend thousands of dollars seeing how many airport parking garages they could get into with the gun and write about that.