Members of a group who call themselves law-abiding slingshot owners say the new TSA rules allowing knives on planes but continuing to ban slingshots is not only unfair but casts a shadow on one of the best-loved stories in the Bible.
The group, Davids Against Goliath, says the evidence is clear that while knives have played well-documented roles in airborne tragedies, not a single airborne terrorist has been known to carry a slingshot.
“In fact in recent years there has been only one case of a slingshot bringing down a commercial aircraft belonging to a major carrier,” said the group’s spokesman,” Bob Payne.
And that case, Payne is quick to point out, was determined by a fact-finding board, in an 8-4 decision, to be an accident.
“As you may well remember, a man was having a cookout in his backyard, and he’d drunk a beer or two, and meant to use his slingshot to fire a flaming marshmallow over the fence onto his neighbor’s patio, as a harmless joke,” Payne said. ” But he mistakenly loaded the slingshot with a seagull instead, and the bird lofted higher than the man thought it would, and was sucked into the engine of a 747. And as tragic as the incident was, the majority of the board did find that most at fault was the seagull.”
Payne said the result of that incident, which is unlikely ever to be repeated, except on national holidays occuring in months when it is warm enough to cook outside, all responsible slingshot owners are being prohibited from using a handy tool that undeniably has practical uses aboard an aircraft.
“I cannot tell you how many times I have been on a plane, wanted to get a flight attendant’s attention, and the call button wasn’t working, and a slingshot loaded with a jellybean would have saved me considerable inconvenience,” Payne said.
Asked to comment on the news that baseball bats and golf clubs would also be allowed aboard under the TSA’s new ruling, Payne answered only: “Are you kidding me? Do you know how much damage David could have done to Goliath with a three iron?”
When not touring the country as a paid spokesperson for Davids Against Goliath, Bob Payne is the editor in chief and a religion columnist for the travel humor website BobCarriesOn.com.
