Sharp! TSA Snags Oversized Bottle, Misses Deadly Weapon

You might say the TSA isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. The agency appears to be more focused on detecting shampoo and water bottles than actual weapons, if the TSA agents at JFK are any indication. Eagle-eyed screeners confiscated passenger Gabrielle Olsen’s bottle of liquid on Sunday … and completely missed the antique dagger (!!) in her bag. The NY Post reports that the TSA finally noticed the knife on the X-ray screen after Olsen had left the screening area—and it took another 10 minutes to alert the police to the incident.

Olsen was arrested, but the whole mishap caused a screening area to be shut down for almost two hours. The passenger claimed that the knife was given to her by her antiques-dealer father for protection.

This is only the latest TSA embarrassment at JFK. Last month, a passenger slipped away after being flagged for a secondary screening, causing a shutdown of an entire terminal and a re-screening of all the passengers. Also in February, a non-passenger managed to get past a TSA checkpoint in order to greet his wife at the gate (remember those days?).

What do you think? Is the TSA so focused on making sure no one gets past them with anything larger than travel-sized bottle of sunscreen that they’re missing other, more dangerous objects?