Surreptitious Weapon Looks Like A Cell Phone: New Airline Security Threat

wnbc.com ^ | June 27, 2002

[TomGuy]

Surreptitious Weapon Looks Like A Cell Phone

Guns Disguised As Cell Phones Pose New Airline Security Threat

POSTED: 4:33 p.m. EDT June 27, 2002
UPDATED: 2:35 p.m. EDT June 28, 2002
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Aviation security consultant Wayne Black finds many airport screeners don't know what they're doing.

"We are still playing catch-up, and will be playing catch-up [for some time]," Black said. "We are still not trained."

"I saw people with these little wands scanning the forehead of a bald man," Black continued. "You'll see them pull an 80-year-old lady in a wheelchair out of line and search her and scan her bare arms."

While screeners use special X-Ray machines for laptop computers, experts say cell phones get nothing but a visual inspection leaving security wide open for one thing that's new: A cell phone gun.

"It's a cell phone loaded with four 22-caliber bullets," Black said. "Those things crank out of there at almost 100 feet per second."

Link to story

[big'ol_freeper]

[philman_36]

Bond-style mobile phone-guns seized November 30, 2000 (complete with interactive link even!)
Deadly Decoys
Notice at the bottom...Copyright © 2000
Deadly decoys December 5, 2000

Been around...nothing new. Somebody is very late to the show.

[Still Using Air]

"I saw people with these little wands scanning the forehead of a bald man..."

Hmmmm....

[AAABEST]

What? You never heard of the peel-n-stick fake hairy mole that shoots 22-caliber bullets?

LMAO

[RedBloodedAmerican]

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Or watch this little clip

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Whoa!

[robertpaulsen]

You are correct. See chart.

For some reason, I used hyper velocity LR in my example. Standard velocity .22 rimfire ammunition are cartridges with muzzle velocities between 1055 fps and 1100 fps.

Subsonic ammunition has a muzzle velocity under 1055 fps, or under the speed of sound measured at sea level. In a subsonic cartridge, the shooter does not experience the high pitch "crack" that is common with high velocity ammunition. The "crack" is actually the bullet breaking the speed of sound and producing a small sonic boom.(liberal plagiarism from the website)

[Don Myers]

"I like the fact that they use current events for story lines."

Their stories are normally more like science fiction than reality. Ask any real JAG Officer what he or she does.

[Monitor]

Unless there is a significant enough length of barrel over which to accelerate that bullet from a standing stop, that 22LR bullet, regardless of what it's published velocity is, is going to be going pretty slow.

[archy]

A .22 short will go subsonic out of a handgun, but it would still probably be in the 500-600 fps range.

About 825 fps from an Astra *Cub* model 2000 with a CAC22 sound suppressor on it, firing CCI standard velocity .22 short target ammo loaded for Olympic rapid-fire competition, often shot with the short cartridge, considerably less powerful than most .22 short ammo other than the CB cap loadings.

[archy]

A .22 short will go subsonic out of a handgun, but it would still probably be in the 500-600 fps range.

About 825 fps from an Astra *Cub* model 2000 with a CAC22 sound suppressor on it, firing CCI standard velocity .22 short target ammo loaded for Olympic rapid-fire competition, often shot with the short cartridge, considerably less powerful than most .22 short ammo other than the CB cap loadings.

[Redcloak]

Klingons have been known to do the same thing.

[Publius6961]

a flight attendant called in and told another story about screener ineptitude. She said that federal marshall took his gun on the plane, with a permit, but the screeners took away his nail clippers.

They gotta start giving these people IQ tests...

[chuknospam]

Bwahahah. I hope the mainstream media picks up on Birdman again.

[Tennessee_Bob]

liberal plagiarism

That's it - you confessed to the "L" word. We're keeping an eye on you now....

heh heh heh

[henbane]

The guns are thought to be built in the Balkans where there is a market for such things and gangsters have been importing them into the West. The Register

These deadly little items are probably a cottage industry in Kosovo by now, thanks to Bubba's Balkan Blunder--and the current complicity of NATO and the UN to "look the other way" at gangster organizations in the region.

The Muslim-oriented Albanian mafia most likely distributes crates of these things to Al-qaida operations worldwide.

[Almondjoy]

Hmm... 100 feet per second? I still think something that's travelling at oh i'll guess here.. 70 mph. still will hurt pretty bad.

[El Sordo]

A firearm can be diguised as virtually anything, such as a pen, a PDA, even a box of Tic-Tacs (though something inherently metallic woudl be preferrable).

As long as the airport inspecto-bots keep up the current idiocy they will always be "behind the curve"

[BJungNan]

It is all politics. When the resolve is their, so will be the solution. For now, it is more important to have 80-year-old lady's take off their shoes than it is to do a complete search of those most likely to cause harm.