The Purse!

Customs creeps have been pushing it a lot ever since 2001 - but this one really takes the cake.

They have been stopping people at the border, interrogating them, wasting their time (as well as their own - and people's tax money) and being an unbearable nuisance overall since the tragic (though preventable) events of 9/11. They've been doing this for a good reason - for now, we have to prevent what is preventable indeed...

But the problem is that they push the envelope and stop making sense all-together when they make a fuss over next-to-nothing.

That is especially sad when we know that they once let really dangerous lunatics board their planes, hijack them and you know the rest...!

Customs has been making a mockery of the enhanced security model by detaining people over mere comments made while they have their baggages checked! If one cannot even make a joke anymore, what is this: security or fascism?

They stopped at the gates everyone carrying anything in-between a water bottle to an electrical toothbrush! Granted, in the hands of a dangerous professional, these and many more totally harmless objects can be LETHAL - and sure, it may look like water, feel like water, but it can be anything but water too...

They actually even stopped some terrorists too - evil extremist minds bent on some villainous agenda while they awaited their plane to take off like everyone else...

This time, they stopped the most dangerous one of them all: the vanitous teenager - with an attitude.

Truth be told, customs acted more like the fashion police than actually homeland security on this one - indeed. On a flight from Virginia to Florida, Vanessa Gibbs found herself detained by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) because she didn't accessorize decently, apparently. What was the fuss all about? A controversy, no more than that one might say, over the mere appearance of her purse. Her purse!

No, it wasn't the content inside the purse that the TSA objected to - for that could have conceivably been the case, of course. Rationally, logically, the TSA could have perhaps discovered something there; revealed some hidden explosive device that only the x-ray could have detected? If it had belonged to a bearded guy with crazed bloodshot eyes, it might have been the case - but then this blog here would have been titled "the Man-Purse".

No, the fact is that agency officials simply took exception with the design of a gun on Gibbs' handbag. It could have been worse: she could have been wearing a gothic "death rules" motifed t-shirt with that - we are talking about a 17 year-old after all here...!

"It's my style, it's camouflage, it has an old western gun on it," Gibbs told News4Jax.com. The fact is, also, that Gibbs didn't run into any trouble while traveling north from Jacksonville International Airport - for, apparently, they have seen it all down in Florida. It was only on her way back home that TSA officials ailing from Norfolk International Airport pulled her aside. Norfolk folks are, shall we say, more conservative, perhaps...?

Not that it makes any difference either, but it is interesting to note also that it was a female agent of the TSA that objected to the cool purse design: cool as in "I'm a tough cookie" cool, of course. One supposes that this Norfolk dame only goes so far as having a Disney Evil Queen purse or a Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil purse - nothing beyond that threshold.

The exchange between the high-browed TSA dame and the rebeliious cool teen went something like this: "She was like, 'This is a federal offense because it's in the shape of a gun,'" Gibbs said. "I'm like, 'But it's a design on a purse. How is it a federal offense?'"

Gibbs then stated to the news peeps that swarmed her to grant her the mandatory fifteen seconds of mediatic infamy this rather amusing account of the events: "after TSA agents figured out the gun was a fake, they told me to check the bag or turn it over."

Wow - they took some time to actually figure out that the purse was "a fake" - and did not actually contain a gun inside... WOW.

It gets better.
By the time security wrapped up the inspection, the pregnant teen missed her flight, and Southwest Airlines sent her to Orlando instead. The changed itinerary created no small amount of anxiety for Gibbs' mother, who was already waiting for her to arrive at the Jacksonville airport.
Double WOW: the lass is pregnant too! She actually needs a gun, for protection in dangerous Jacksonville (not sure about the level of danger in Norfolk, really - with pedantic law officials like these around at every level, you know - crime must be low!) But how can you explain that TSA agents would be so cruel as to create such frustration, anxiety, outright stress to a teeny-weeny pregs who misses her flight, is shipped to the wrong (not to mention much more dangerous) town afterwards and it is all over a damn design on a PURSE?!?

"Oh, it's terrifying. I was so upset," said Tami Gibbs, the teen's mom. "I was on the phone all the way to Orlando trying to figure out what was going on with her. It was terrifying."
Terrifying? Wait until they actually hold the toddler up, once he's born, for looking highly suspicious with his "mother likes guns - and me, I have a bazooka" teething bib on!

Everyone agreed that the actual design on the purse wasn't worth all this fuss at all - it is only a few inches in size and hollow. It is not even a smoking gun, for crying out loud! And one look at the owner of this purse and you can tell that it packs no ammo at all. "I carried this from Jacksonville to Norfolk, and I've carried it from Norfolk to Jacksonville," Vanessa Gibbs said. "Never once has anyone said anything about it until now."

Nonetheless, the TSA says the design could be considered a "replica weapon," something that the agency has banned since 2002. Just imagine what would have happened if Gibbs had also been wearing stiletto heels.
That's what you gotta love about the TSA - they stick to their guns.

22,000 comments have been made on this story so far - which might be a record, perhaps? Everybody has an opinion, of course, especially when new heights of lunacy are attained...!