Better to dispose of the gun in the bathroom where there are no cameras.

According to today's Houston Chronicle, it was one of ours here - a DEA agent based in Houston on a flight from Denver to Houston. The Chronicle had to obtain a copy of the Denver police report and the DEA is staying mum with "Incidents such as the one you described . . . fall within the scope of an (internal) investigation and DEA does not confirm, deny or comment on internal investigations."

Also noted in the article was an ICE agent leaving a gun in a restroom in IAH last year.

Has everyone here completely lost faith in society in general, or perhaps just the justice system? Leaving a possibly loaded weapon for either another passanger or the janitor to find? Have we completely gone mad? I wouldn't leave a loaded firearm in the bathroom of a restaurant if I discovered it--why would I leave one in a presumably sterile area?

Upon discovering it, my first instinct would be to clear it and secure it. Bullets out. Chamber clear. In case of a pistol, slide locked open (at minimum) or removed (if familiar/possible). Parts and bullets placed in different places (pocket, backpack, other pocket, whatever). Maybe leave some part behind--the idea being to make it as hard as possible to use it as a weapon. Then calmly walk to the nearest checkpoint (if in an airport) and ask for a supervisor or an LEO, explain the situation, explain that everything is secure, where it is on my person, and let them deal with the consequences--after all, it's their, ah, SNAFU. TSA has its moments, but I'm reasonably confident no sworn LEO is going to accuse me of wrongdoing for showing them a secure, half-stripped weapon, ammo separate, etc. And if they do, what jury will convict me?

Troublesome and time-consuming? Very possibly. OTOH, if some lunatic finds the gun and decides to shoot people just for fun and I could've stopped it, I don't want that on my conscience. This is especially true in a sterile/secure area, where the generally law-abiding public can't be "armed" with so much as a pocketknife with which to defend themselves

Risk is a function of likelihood and consequence. The consequence for possessing a weapon in the sterile area is severe. Evidently the likelihood that a LEO would accuse you of wrongdoing is the inverse of "reasonably confident".

It sounds to me like you see the risk on the high side, yet you would still take the risk. Your risk tolerance must be high, you appear to be a risk seeker.

I can imagine no good consequence of a scenario of "Look what I found" involving me, an airport LEO and a found firearm. Remove any one of those three and life appears much simpler.

Keep in mind that this is a society which thinks that it's perfectly reasonable to suspend children from school who bring action figures with toy guns to school, because of "zero tolerance" policies regarding weapons. Plus, we're talking about a scenario in which everyone has already passed through a TSA checkpoint, amplifying the reactions to perceived threats (or non-threats, as the case may be).

The most I'd be willing to do in that situation is guard the weapon, while someone else goes and finds a LEO to take possession of it. I'm certainly not about to pick up a weapon I've never seen before and attempt to secure it --- especially in a public place where all you need to ruin your day is one nervous type looking at you attempting to clear the weapon and start screaming "OMG IT'S A GUN!!!!".

Let alone your fingerprints would be all over it.

Although I know of 3 instances where firearms have been left in public toilets, one of which involved a personal friend of mine, I can not for the life of me understand how this happens.

I have been involved in handling weapons for most of my adult life and I have never even come close to anything like leaving my weapon behind anywhere. Unless you're planning on dropping the hammer on someone, why would it ever leave the holster in a public place? A public toilet is no place for "playing with your gun"!

I'm not sure what I'd do in a situation where I found one in a toilet but here are some thoughts that come to mind:

1. I would NOT, under any circumstances, take the weapon as a whole outside of the toilet stall. I'm not going to get shot or arrested because some idiot has poor weapon control.

2. I would NOT throw it in the trash. There are significant safety risks as well as leaving trace evidence behind should the weapon be recovered. Too many questions to be answered in that case.

3. I would NOT simply ignore it. Again too much risk to public safety.

4. I think I'd do one of two things. I'd either leave it in situ, block the bathroom door so nobody gets in and call the police or I'd break the weapon down (remove the magazine, barrel and any round that may be in the chamber), take those parts with me (doesn't look like a gun so I'm not going to get shot and nobody will get hurt if they find the rest) and then report the incident to the police and give them the bits I've taken.

I know it was said in jest, but keeping the weapon, although tempting, would not be an option. Too many legal consequences if it's found, unknown history (you DON'T want to be caught with an illegal weapon that "has bodies on it"), etc.

Prints are easy to deal with. A bit of toilet paper or a paper towel will take care of that but with my luck I'd leave DNA (an arm hair, perhaps) behind.

This is definitely the right thing to do. Unfortunately, a lot of people (myself included) would be tempted to bury the situation by breaking the weapon down and throwing it away. The reason? Overreaction. Nobody wants to be the one who finds the gun, does the right thing and reports it, and results in a terminal dump or lockdown, hundreds of flights canceled, and resorting to Greyhound to get home.

I agree, and would not expect my good local police to suspect me of any wrong doing. But I don't want to deal with it that way. I realize this sounds selfish and apathetic, and I respect you for going the extra mile, but for me: No.

I vote, serve jury duty, and participate in local issues. However I'm not going to lose a travel day due to a terminal dump and/or spend the day hanging out with police and the TSA while I reschedule my flights, lose money on hotels and the logistics of a lost day of my hard earned vacation with family or friends.

I would take it apart, take it with, store it securely at my destination outside the airport and then alert authorities, probably anonymously, describing as written above why I waited.

It's an objectivist angle but so be it.

Oops, Keystone Cop forgets firearm in DIA bathroom
 

Fascinating discussion. Apparently the mechanisms put into place to keep us safe are either not trusted (airport police, TSA), or result in excessive pain and aggravation (e.g.terminal dump, lost time and money). Therefore, those mechanisms keep us from doing the "right thing", and result in us being less safe.

The TSA and airport cops: making us less safe.

I agree it's fun to posit on what one would do in a circumstance like this. Odds are rare we'd have to face it.

I see it as a simple risk analysis. If a gun is accidentally left in plain sight it's obviously not a nefarious covert op. There's no ill intent, so why inconvenience thousands of people? It's simple critical thinking, which is lacking in many "abundance of caution" decisions - as exampled above by the zero tolerance school toy gun policies.

Conversely, if I see an immediate danger - for example a power line falls on the street, a bridge is out, I find a cache of hidden weapons in a concourse planter, etc. I would (and have) stopped to help because I want to, and it's the right thing to do. In a REAL threat my personal convictions would put my needs second, and in examples like above even miss flight to help if necessary.

An unclaimed camera is no reason to divert a flight. One gun (stupidly) left in plain sight does not merit a complete stoppage of a major airport hub. If one were to find a single or a multiple hidden guns, obviously arranged for future use, then I would reconsider.

I used to work for the local school district, and our employee instructions for coming across an abandoned gun were: don't touch it, keep students away from the area (lock the door, stand guard at the bathroom door and don't let anyone in, etc), get LE, and let LE investigate and take away the gun. The only "interruption" in the school day would be that one hall bathroom was unusable for 20 minutes and you had to ask students to go use another bathroom. Fortunately, this never happened to me.

What would we not do? We would not evacuate the entire school, call in the school buses, send all the students home for the day, and not re-open the school until LE had combed the entire facility for anything as small as a razor blade that could potentially be used as a weapon.

See the difference? I completely sympathize with anyone who finds a weapon in an airport and keeps it under wraps to avoid a terminal dump.

Heck, the terrorists can now act in plain sight. Sneak a box knife onto an airplane as a passenger, throw it into a seatback pocket, pretend to find it, alert a flight attendant, and you get to single-handedly shut down an entire airport! A coordinated series of these attacks at several hubs, and you get to make waves around the world.

I disagree. IMO it's not "obviously" anything other than a lost/abandoned firearm. It COULD be lost by a LEO but (even thought it's the case in this example) the odds are fairly slim that a LEO would be that stupid. It COULD be abandoned by a smuggler who got nervous. It COULD be forgotten by a bad guy who either got distracted or had taken something to calm themselves before the act and then got absent minded. It COULD be lots of things but it's not OBVIOUSLY anything other than what the prima facia evidence shows.

Why inconvenience thousands of people? Because it's a deadly weapon, not in the posession of an authorised person, and found abandoned in a sterile area. IMO public safety trumps inconvenience in this instance, hands down.