One of the five Americans arrested for bringing ammunition to Turks and Caicos has pleaded guilty and is facing a minimum of 12 years in prison.
Tyler Wenrich, a 31-year-old paramedic from Virginia, pleaded guilty to two counts of ammunition possession on Tuesday morning, according to Dr. Angela Brooks, deputy director of public prosecutions in Turks and Caicos, CNN reported.
Possession of firearms and ammunition is illegal on the Caribbean island chain, which is a British Overseas Territory where five Americans have been arrested in recent months after ammunition was found in their luggage.
Wenrich was caught in April with just two 9mm rounds in his bag at a security checkpoint as he returned to the Royal Caribbean Cruise ship following a beach excursion.
I do not travel by air in close to 15 years and internationally in over two decades. Still, I was giving thought to this event and realized that I may have a solution or at least a way to reduce the chances of getting gun stuff in travel bags and it came when I realized I did not need to take my old range bag with me for an afternoon of plinking at the local range.
The CED bag was bought when I was doing IDPA and it was an all-day of shooting. It is a voluminous thing and short of a rifle, you can carry enough stuff to start a small revolution provided your back can hold.
The one on top is a plain jane tool bag bought at Home Depot. It will carry a box or 2 of ammo, one pistol in a pouch plus eye and ear protection. And being a tool bag, it is built tough and capable to withstand the abuse shooters give to their carriers.
What do both have in common? Neither could be confused with travel luggage and are immediately identified by you or anybody in your household as such. That means you can segregate your shooting implements from your travel needs because they only belong on easily identifiable carriers.
The other identifier (and this was purely coincidental) is that all my shotting carriers are or have a good portion in the color red and none of our luggage bags are or have red.
And, of course, blindly trusting that manufacturing and color will keep you safe from a round in the wrong bag is not the smart way to go. Gun Gremlins will try to sneak a round into your make up bag when you are not watching. Always double and triple check before packing for a trip and do not keep bags close to each other.
Do not tempt the Gun Gremlin.
Re bag segregation, agreed. We have three types: range bags, luggage, and BOBs (bug-out bags) as we live in an area where we may need to evac on shortish notice. (Wildfire prone region.) The bags stay in different areas of the house.
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Re the whole situation … Still seems odd to me. Not this one so much as the entire boxes (or equivalent) that were found. I’m not too surprised TSA missed them, but. Only found when leaving? So many incidents in so short a time? Etc.
It was a cruise ship, so TSA may not have been involved.
Then again, TSA has a very bad track record; if I remember right, in tests it was found that TSA missed the vast majority of firearms in carry-on luggage. Needless to say, TSA works hard to keep those results secret. Actually improving their performance is not something they care about, which of course is perfectly normal behavior for government bureaucrats.
It was a cruise ship, so TSA may not have been involved.
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I’ve only been on one cruise ship, but based on that: No, TSA wouldn’t have been involved. It would have been private security employed by the cruise line.
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To get an idea: Imagine a TSA checkpoint, complete with bag scanners and metal detectors, but staffed by competent professionals who actually care about their work. They were polite, thorough, and quick. (Being private sector, not government, explains a lot.)
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I’m shocked that those couple 9mm rounds weren’t found when the people first boarded the ship. That, along with the sudden frequency of Americans being arrested for this particular infraction on this particular chain of islands, and the severity of the charges and sentences, and the fact the State Department isn’t touching any of this, make all of this story extremely suspicious.
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(Actually, given who’s sitting in the White House, the State Department one is not at all surprising….)
Pretty much all my bags are black, but the range bag is the one with the bright orange CAT attached to the carry handles. Good indicator and no-fumbling access. Everything else is in pouches, pockets, or just “inside.”
A 4-inch stenciled number on the sides indicates it is also a bug-out bag.
reason 2367 I stopped traveling in mass transit…. my range bag is a double bowling ball bag with a handle and wheels.. green so it blends in with the lawn heh. kinda sad they make a YUGE deal over 2 fukkin rounds of poodle popper when tons of drugs pass thru there on a regular basis… 12 YEARS I woulda pled not guilty … 2 rounds , if I was the guy who found em Id put em in my pocket and say next time be careful…. and don’t be a frikken dumbass! you make ALL firearms owners look bad…
It is a British territory, so their absolute disdain for anything that could be used for self defense carries over.
More than likely “luggage” means backpack here. I doubt this guy is heading to the range with a rolling suitcase lol.
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Pretty horseshit to me. Clear accident. Deport the damn dude and ban him from the country instead jailing him if you really must be strict. A case where our gov should be twisting turks and Caicos nipples for fairer treatment but it is a gun and a normal guy, not some arms dealer enemy, pedophile, rapist, or other such “nice guy”. Seems like if we can have visa less travel agreements something like that should be trivially easy. Gov gotta gov though and padding those numbers gotta happen I guess.
Turks and Caicos – Major industry: Tourism.
Noted.
T&C is now on my list of No Go places.
I recommend the NRA, GOA, SAF and every other pro-gun org tell their members to boycott T&C.
If they don’t want us, they don’t need our money.
This has the same vibe as New Jersey jailing people from out of state over a single hollow point round and Massachusetts persecuting a teacher for possession of a musket ball.
Both US and foreign entities should be leaned on to repeal bullshit laws, or have a “good faith” exemption just like the cops have when screw up.
Something seems fishy about this.
On the one hand, there are backpacks I own that I STILL won’t fly or travel out of state with because I used them as improvised range bags years ago when I got into firearms and I am to this day paranoid that there might be an empty casing that I missed or traces of powder residue on them.
On the other… this is, what? The fifth or sixth American to be arrested on these charges in the past month or so? That strikes me as far too many incidents in far too short of a time.
Segregating anything that would touch ammo/guns and stuff that was strictly for travel/NPE was one of the things I did earlier on because I, even as . . . pleasant as they are, wanted to ensure my interactions with the Thousands Standing Around were limited as much as possible.
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I doubled down on that once I started working in a very hard NPE at my last job. Stories like this just reinforce that, while it may be a pain sometimes, it’s absolutely the right path.
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Also, on the range bags, I did a similar downsizing when I went from toting a massive MidwayUSA range bag for USPSA/IDPA/Multigun to more a much more compact range bag that’s 1/3rd to 1/2 that size for casual range outings. It wasn’t a Husky toolbag but a similarly sized range bag that would handle everything I’d need for a casual plinking session with a couple handguns for an hour or two.