TSA keeps pregnant woman from plane over her purse
Published: 03 December, 2011, 01:42
Vanessa Gibbs
TAGS: Arms, Children, Law, Lifestyle, USA
Was it a crime against fashion or a crime against the feds? Either way, 17-year-old Vanessa Gibbs is outraged that TSA officials wouldn’t let her board a plane at the Norfolk, Virginia airport — because of her purse.
Gibbs tells WJXT-TV from her hometown of Jacksonville, Florida that she had no problem getting to Virginia. On the way back, however, officers with the Transportation Security Administration at Norfolk International Airport threw a fit over her fashion accessory — a small purse that is decorated with a tiny, bedazzled gun.
To clarify, it wasn’t a real gun; nor did it look like a gun. To clarify, it was a purse.
"It's my style. It's camouflage. It has an old western gun on it," Gibbs tells the TV station.
A female agent with the TSA wasn’t so understanding.
"She was like, 'This is a federal offense because it's in the shape of a gun.' I'm like, 'But it's a design on a purse. How is it a federal offense?'"
The TSA told the girl that she couldn’t board the plane with her purse because replica weapons have been outlawed on the aircraft for almost a decade. Gibbs says that they should have exercised a bit of common sense with this case, though.
“It’s a purse, not a weapon,” she says.
The hold-up escalated long enough for Gibbs, who is expecting a child, to miss her flight back home. Although her mother was waiting for her in Jacksonville, her only option became a last-minute trip to Orlando.
“I was on the phone all the way to Orlando trying to figure out what was going on with her. It was terrifying. I don't ever want to go through it again,” adds Tami Gibbs.
03.12.2011, 00:57
3 comments
Bizarre 'Women for Herman Cain' campaignDid Herman Cain act sexually inappropriate with a few (how many has it been now?) women? While the presidential hopeful tries to close the lid on that one, dozens of women are apparently logging onto his website to show their support. US Election 2012 |
05.12.2011, 20:47
9 comments
Obama's approval rating dips below Carter'sThe frontrunners in the 2012 election race like to label Barack Obama a one-term president, and new reports suggest that prediction might be more likely than ever. US Election 2012 |
Daniel Pontes wrote in#5
Yea not feeling so bad for her and her mother.
Act like an idiot or associate with one you will raise some eyebrows,
"Tammy Gibbs, 44, of Carthage, charged with two counts of TennCare fraud for obtaining a prescription of Hydrocodone, using TennCare to pay for it, and then selling a portion to an undercover agent on two separate occasions;"
One, what her mother has or has not done has nothing to do with this instance. Two, her mother is Tami Gibbs, not Tammy Gibbs. Gibbs is a pretty common name nation wide, and you could potentially be setting yourself up for libel...
Ok, I just checked the TSA's site regarding "replica guns." It very specifically says "Realistic Replicas of Firearms" cannot be carried on the plane but can be checked in through baggage. This was not realistic by any means, and clearly should have been permitted!
An apology and refund are owed to this young lady, but will she get either of them???







Only in post-industrial, post-democratic, post-Republic American USA.
Is it too late to correct the matter? Perhaps from here on out, TSA agents should all be screened for vision problems. Any such exams should include tests for distorted field-of-vision and various disorders of Depth Perception.
These are not a matter of mere *eyesight*, mind you - it goes much deeper. One tends to suspect that TSA's upper echelon - and the greedy aggressives who control the agency's BS-ridden top-down agenda - are too near 1%-grade hopeless to withstand much longer.
Just sayin'. And that is all. 0{:-\o<