I recently checked firearms at IAD and it was a debacle. Even at the elite check-in counters, United only had about 3 employees working for about 20 counters. There were contractors (porters?) just tagging bags at almost all the counters. When I told the porter that I needed to check a firearm, he was clueless and had to call over his supervisor, who was also a contractor and couldn't help. He told the original porter that I needed a united person, so he walked away to find someone. It took 35 minutes of literally standing at the counter waiting for a united rep to finally come over, then another 10 minutes for her to find the right paperwork, only to complain that they had recently changed the process and HER supervisor would have to sign it, which took another 3 phone calls and 10 minutes to accomplish before the porter was allowed to walk my bag down to TSA. Luckily I arrived arrived at the airport early, because I stood at the counter (after waiting in line to get to a counter) for nearly an hour. No one at the counter ever even asked to see the weapons, they just gave me the orange tag to put in my bag.

In contrast, on my return flight from LAS, I walked up to the counter, the dedicated agent at that counter took care of the paperwork, asked me to show her that the weapons were unloaded, and I was on my way in about 3 minutes. She suggested I wait around near the counters for 10 minutes in case TSA paged me with any questions. I waited, was never paged, and continued on to my gate.

I do suspect that LAS gets more firearms traffic than IAD in general, and I happened to be travelling the week before the Shot Show, so maybe they had recently trained expecting the surge. Whatever the reason, the IAD staff could learn a few things.