UK airport cop: gun-shaped shirt decoration is illegal
Kristan sez, "I was coming into Birmingham on transit to Singapore from Palma when I was stopped by a customs officer. I was wearing a stripy jumper with the shape of a pink gun sewn on to the front.
"The customs officer stopped me to let me know that if I was leaving the country through Birmingham then he was going to have to arrest me because I had a gun on my jumper. I know it isn’t best to argue with these sort of people but I had to question whether he had confused a pink fabric gun shape stuck on a jumper to that of a real gun. His answer – Some people wore t-shirts which had photo’s of guns in holsters or positioned to look as though they were guns sticking out of trousers (as it happened I had one of these in my bag. I wonder if I could have been done for concealing a t-shirt?
"But for me that argument didn’t stand well as I wasn’t wearing a life like looking image of a gun. When I posed this to him he changed his tune a bit and explained that the reason he wanted to arrest me was due to the fact that wearing the fabric shape of a gun on my jumper was offensive."
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Cory Doctorow
Upcoming appearances
* Feb 9, 2012, DeKalb, IL: Day of Doctorow, NIU
* Feb 10-12, 2012, Chicago, IL: Capricon 32
* Feb 13, 2012, Arlington, TX: UT Arlington College of Engineering Distinguished Speaker Series
* Feb 16, 2012, Victoria, BC: 13th Annual Privacy and Security Conference
Recent books:
* Context (essays)
* With a Little Help (short stories)
* For the Win (YA novel)
* Makers (adult novel)
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