Boy 'caught with guns at Cairns airport'

[NM]

from news.com.au:

A 14-YEAR-OLD boy will face court after two stolen concealable firearms were allegedly found in his luggage at Cairns Airport.

Australian Federal Police notified local police about 6am Monday when the .40 and .22 calibre sporting pistols were discovered.

 

[turtlemichael]

Sandgropers! Say no more. Good Cairns boys wouldn't do that

 

[Nigelinoz]

The thing that I found slightly worrying was that according to the report the 14 year old stole the guns from a store in Karratha where he was employed,I would have thought that there would be regulations about employing minors in a store that sold firearms?

 

[Platy]

The thing that I found slightly worrying was that according to the report the 14 year old stole the guns from a store in Karratha where he was employed,I would have thought that there would be regulations about employing minors in a store that sold firearms?

Even more worrying, he made it from Karratha to Cairns? How? By plane??? :shock:

 

[Flashback]

Even more worrying, he made it from Karratha to Cairns? How? By plane??? :shock:

Yes.. why wasn't this picked up in screening out of KTA, or into / out of PER? :shock:

Seems to be a lot of bad eggs in CNS these days, eh!

 

[ronone69]

Anyone who actually thinks airline security provides any sort of assurances that weapons or other banned items (such as nail clippers) will not find their way onto planes is seriously kidding themselves. The security is a joke and most of the people doing the security are too busy socialising and having personal discussions to notice anything in anybodies luggage.

But more importantly - it does not matter anyway. If a terrorist wanted to take over a place they could grab a couple steel forks, break the top of a wine bottle, etc. There are hundreds of potential weapons on a plane.

Australia is almost the only country in the world that insists airlines use plastic knives. Most of the plastic knives are actually sharper than the old steel knives !!!

The security is simply a deterrent for stupid young men who can't think their way out of a paper bag

 

[oz_mark]

If the weapons were in carry-on, I could understand that the security checkpoints should have picked them up. But, they seem to have been in the checked in luggage, where they would have been less of an issue for aircraft security.

I am not sure exactly what check-in baggage is screened for, but believe it is for explosives rather than guns. So the ammunitaion maybe should have been picked up, which may be a gap in he security process.

And finally, it wasn't airport security in Queensland that located the weapons. It was police acting on a tip-off from WA police!

 

[kevrosmith]

Hmm.. that's not my understanding... from what I've heard, the bags were re-screened in our Domestic Checked Baggage screening as they were transferring from a JQ flight to a QF-link flight to Weipa, and I assume the KTA - PER link was QF also.

And as someone previously mentioned, it went to level 2 screening probably because of the density of the ammunition (explosives detection), rather than the guns themselves.

My understanding (hearsay) is that it was the QF detection equipment in PER that should've picked up the screening: any baggage coming from un-screened regional ports and transferring to Domestic flights has to be screened. E.g. any transfers from WEI to BNE here in CNS, all the baggage is screened here in CNS before getting onto the flight to BNE.

I'm fairly sure all the major airports (MEL, SYD, PER, ADL, CNS etc.) in Australia now have 100% checked-baggage screening for Domestic flights, and the regional-transfer rule applies to all those airports. I know we do.. surely we're not the first and only in Australia...?