Wyoming man with loaded gun arrested at San Jose airport

KCBS.com ^ | August 14, 2002 | kcbs staff

[NEWwoman]

Wyoming man with loaded gun arrested at San Jose airport Source: kcbs Publication date: 2002-08-14

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- A Wyoming man arrested after airport security screeners discovered a loaded semi-automatic handgun in his carryon luggage was being held in Santa Clara County jail Tuesday night.

William Simmons, 57, was arrested around 2:45 Tuesday afternoon at Mineta San Jose International Airport after a screener found the gun in his luggage and notified police, said Officer Joseph Deras, a spokesman with the San Jose Police Department.

Simmons was being held on charges of possessing a concealed loaded firearm, Deras said. Simmons was uncooperative with police and had to be forcibly arrested, he said. Simmons was taken to a nearby hospital after complaining he was hyperventilating. He was examined and released, Deras said.

The airport was not evacuated because security screeners found the weapon before Simmons was past the checkpoint, Deras said.

(10:35p.m.)

[Dog Gone]

Why the heck are we here then? I thought we were here to change things for the better, not just reluctantly accept the liberal status quo.

That's a good question, although I think we have to recognize political realities for what they are. At this point, we'll be doing well to get pilots to have guns.

And I want the right to carry a gun on a plane, but I've noticed a few passengers that I'm glad have been screened to make sure they didn't have one. The chances of allowing anyone at all to carry a gun onto a plane ever again are negligible.

[CWRWinger]

Every time I fly, I wish I were allowed to carry my gun aboard.

I am not flying again until both passengers and pilots are armed. Second Amendment rights are being denied by both the government and airline management. I notice the airlines are hurting now, even with government bailout money. They would go back to pre-9/11 levels of business if the Second Amendment were not being violated.

I don't care if the airlines go broke, either.

[Dog Gone]

They would go back to pre-9/11 levels of business if the Second Amendment were not being violated.

While I'd like to agree with you, I don't. If the news broke tomorrow that the US had decided not to check passengers for weapons anymore, you'd have an even further dropoff in travel. Most people wouldn't want to carry a gun and they surely don't want to think Mohammed in the row in front of them might be.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

And thats part of it. If you are going to allow one, you allow all, and with that you will now have thought police discerning the intent of each person boarding an aircraft. Would you fly with someone who is half cocked? I can see it now: "114 people have shootout aboard Flight 327 to Newark. Pictures at 11".

[RedBloodedAmerican]

You think pre 9-11 passengers were allowed to carry guns onboard?

Oh, wait, lets allow guns and ban box cutters!

[dtel]

Ole Barry Switzer did the same thing at DFW several years back, while head coach of the 'Pokes.
Aside from being publicly ridiculed, all he had to do was pay a fine.

[Dog Gone]

I had forgotten about that. Times have changed.

[CaptainK]

Maybe he has a child who is trying to get into UC Berkeley and needed a tramatic event for their entrance essay.

[martin_fierro]

Norm's brain-dead. I guess that was close enough. <|:)~

[NEWwoman]

Good points. Gun owners, generally speaking, are responsible.

Since 9-11, my husband refuses to fly. It may be having an effect. In the news lately, I hear of airlines in trouble: National, American, United ...

Check out Bill O'Reilley's comments on airlines:

http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60372,00.html

That includes treating us all like terrorist, and not valued customers.
But that could be another post...

[ninenot]

Didn't some big-time football coach 'forget' he had a pistol in his carryon, too--about 5 years ago?

Don't be too quick to judge mental capacity by this sort of incident.

[CWRWinger]

100% of the terrorism against airlines has been from the camel riders. Passengers and pilots armed, camel riders travel in a rental car. Profile.

[CWRWinger]

You think pre 9-11 passengers were allowed to carry guns onboard?

No, but that's one of the reasons why 9/11 happened. Passengers and pilots were not armed and airports did not profile and INS, Klintoon and Bush didn't do their jobs.

[Dog Gone]

Don't be too quick to judge mental capacity by this sort of incident.

That was a few years ago when we had all but forgotten about hijackings. I think even Barry Switzer, the coach you're talking about, would think twice about a gun in an airport today.

[NEWwoman]

>>I guess people don't realize what an airplane is!

Yes, the guy was careless, stupid, whatever (but not as studpid as the feds who loss their guns and classified laptops and don't hear of them getting such treatment. I could be wrong).

Weren't people allowed to carry guns on planes before 1968? Don't recall any problems back then, such as hijackings, etc.

Yes, I know it was a "different time."

Good discussion.

[mvpel]

This psychological phenomenon is known as "projection." From Dr. Sarah Thompson's article, Raging Against Self-Defense,

---

About a year ago I received an e-mail from a member of a local Jewish organization. The author, who chose to remain anonymous, insisted that people have no right to carry firearms because he didn't want to be murdered if one of his neighbors had a "bad day". (I don't know that this person is a "he", but I'm assuming so for the sake of simplicity.) I responded by asking him why he thought his neighbors wanted to murder him, and, of course, got no response. The truth is that he's statistically more likely to be murdered by a neighbor who doesn't legally carry a firearm¹ and more likely to be shot accidentally by a law enforcement officer.²

How does my correspondent "know" that his neighbors would murder him if they had guns? He doesn't. What he was really saying was that if he had a gun, he might murder his neighbors if he had a bad day, or if they took his parking space, or played their stereos too loud. This is an example of what mental health professionals call projection – unconsciously projecting one's own unacceptable feelings onto other people, so that one doesn't have to own them.³ In some cases, the intolerable feelings are projected not onto a person, but onto an inanimate object, such as a gun,⁴ so that the projector believes the gun itself will murder him.

Projection is a defense mechanism. Defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological mechanisms that protect us from feelings that we cannot consciously accept.⁵ They operate without our awareness, so that we don't have to deal consciously with "forbidden" feelings and impulses. Thus, if you asked my e-mail correspondent if he really wanted to murder his neighbors, he would vehemently deny it, and insist that other people want to kill him.

Projection is a particularly insidious defense mechanism, because it not only prevents a person from dealing with his own feelings, it also creates a world where he perceives everyone else as directing his own hostile feelings back at him.⁶

---

[NEWwoman]

>>>Maybe he has a child who is trying to get into UC Berkeley and needed a tramatic event for their entrance essay.

Hee! Hee! Hee!

[NEWwoman]

Thanks for the link. I book marked it.

[Dog Gone]

100% of the terrorism against airlines has been from the camel riders. Passengers and pilots armed, camel riders travel in a rental car. Profile.

I'm not sure we hand out constitutional rights based on racial profiling. In fact, I'm pretty sure we don't.

[HairOfTheDog]

His forgetting the gun in his bag is dumb, but his real stupidity was displayed when he was uncooperative with the authorities when it was discovered. Good grief, you can find a better hero than this!