Last month I flew down to Austin to spend the weekend with the fine folks from Atomic Athlete for their Vanguard event. The Vanguard was basically 36 hours of man skills — we learned how to humanely slaughter rabbits and chickens, land navigation, and even some self-defense techniques from Tim Kennedy. It was awesome. I’ll be doing a full write-up on it soon, so stay tuned for that.

One segment of the event was a firearms class, and we needed to bring our own pistol and ammo to participate in it. Because I was flying, I would have to pack my gun for the trip. Having endured, along with my fellow Americans, thirteen years of taking off our shoes, putting our tiny toiletries in see-through baggies, and getting patted down by TSA agents, I figured flying with an actual, honest-to-goodness weapon would be a nightmare fraught with all sorts of bureaucratic, red tape rigmarole.

As it turned out, except for a small mishap, flying with a gun is surprisingly easy. Today I’ll share my experience and what I learned from it, in case any of you find yourself needing to travel with firearms and ammunition.

How to Pack Your Gun for Flying

TSA regulations require that your gun be packed in a hard-sided container that’s locked. You’ll then place that container in your checked luggage. If you can’t bring pocketknives on the plane, it’s a no-brainer that you can’t bring a gun in your carry-on bag either. That may not have always been the case though; I always thought it was funny that William Shatner had a pistol on him in that Twilight Zone episode where he sees a gremlin guy on the wing of the plane he was flying in. Any old-timers know if you could pack heat in your carry-on luggage back in the day?

Anyway, for my hard-sided, locked gun case I used this Pelican handgun carrier and these two Master locks:

When you put your gun in your hard-sided container, it needs to be unloaded. Unloaded means nothing in the chamber; even an unchambered gun with a loaded magazine inserted in the magazine well violates the rules. The regulations suggest that you could pack a loaded magazine in the same case as your unloaded gun — it just can’t be inserted in the magazine well. To be on the safe side, I made sure all my magazines were unloaded. I also didn’t insert any of my unloaded magazines in the magazine well. In other words, I packed a completely clear gun. Paranoid? Perhaps. I just didn’t want to have to deal with any snafus.

That’s it. Same rules apply for rifles and shotguns. Put them in a hard-sided container that’s locked and make sure they’re unloaded. You even need to pack like this if you’re carrying a starter pistol or just the frame or the lower receiver of a rifle. The only exceptions are not actually bullet-firing guns: airsoft guns, paintball guns, and BB/pellet guns must be packed in your checked baggage, but don’t need to be in a special case or declared. Compressed gas cartridges for these devices aren’t allowed on airplanes at all, even in checked baggage, unless the regulator is completely removed and you have an empty, open-ended canister, which often requires a technician. TSA recommends that you ship cartridges to your destination separately.

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The Best of Brett McKay

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