A forbidden gun image again

Canada:

"As a doctoral student in social and political thought, Marnina Norys has often pondered the pitfalls of favouring rules over judgment, though the topic was far from her mind as she stood in the security line at the Kelowna, B.C., airport on Monday. That all changed when a security officer spied Ms. Norys's necklace and piped up.

"That's a replica," the officer said with a look of disapproval, referring to the four-centimetre-long, sterling silver pendant, shaped like an antique Colt .45 Peacemaker revolver, dangling from Ms. Norys's neck. With that, the 39-year-old Toronto academic with a self-confessed flair for sassy Wild West accessories was told she would have to stow the offending item before boarding her homeward flight. She put it into her carry-on bag, but was then told it would have to travel in her checked luggage instead.

"I was sort of stunned, and I just indicated there's no way I could cause damage with this thing," Ms. Norys said, recounting the incident in an interview yesterday. "And when I said, 'It can't be any danger, what are you talking about,' the agent said, 'Well, it's what it represents.' "

The duel was on and Ms. Norys fired back, telling the agent, "That's censorship, not security." In the end, though, she put the little gun down and returned to the airline counter to check her erstwhile carry-on bag, with the contraband trinket stowed discreetly inside....

Back home, Ms. Norys channelled her frustration into a tongue-in-cheek news release and posted it on an Internet blog site. A Kelowna newspaper picked up the story, which led the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority to issue a swift apology to Ms. Norys, conveyed by e-mail and in a phone call from CATSA spokeswoman Anna-Karina Tabunar....

As it turns out, a perusal of CATSA's list of permitted and non-permitted items shows that in any event the officer had the rules wrong. "Small objects shaped like guns or handcuffs (e.g., pendants, charms)" are approved as both carry-on and checked items, but "items that look like weapons but are not weapons (e.g., a perfume bottle shaped like a hand grenade)" must be checked.

Source

A win of sorts, I suppose.