Is Your Belt Buckle Causing Unnecessary Panic at the Bank?

[Math Is Hard]

SAN DIEGO – It began as a report of an attempted bank robbery.
It turned out to be nothing more than a man's distinctive belt buckle.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/images/070706gunbelt.jpg

Police surrounded the Wells Fargo Bank branch on Camino Ruiz near Mira Mesa Boulevard in Mira Mesa at 11:42 a.m. after someone in the bank reported a man had what looked like a gun under his shirt.

The man, 24-year-old Jacob Johnson of Rancho Peñasquitos, was wearing a dress shirt, casual slacks and a belt with a gun-shaped buckle when he and his friend and neighbor, Jeffrey Russell, entered the bank.

from: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070706-1422-bn06gunbelt.html

 

[Thrice]

It's illegal to have a gun in a bank even if you don't do anything with it?

 

[radou]

Wow. I wonder if there are bazooka, tank, or MIG 29 - shaped belt buckles. I'd go for the bazooka shaped buckle.

 

[Danger]

I'd go for the bazooka shaped buckle.

Yeah... the problem with that is that you'd have to have something below the belt line to sustain the illusion.

 

[radou]

Yeah... the problem with that is that you'd have to have something below the belt line to sustain the illusion.

*poof*

The nice little cloud above my head just vanished.

 

[turbo]

It's illegal to have a gun in a bank even if you don't do anything with it?

Not necessarily. If you have a concealed-carry permit, you can generally carry a concealed weapon in almost any building, apart from jails, courts, airports, and other places where they are strictly forbidden. If you live in a part of the country in which open carry is permitted, you can carry a gun openly, subject usually to municipal statutes, though the regulations from the federal/state/municipal levels often do not line up very well and confusion reigns.

 

[hypatia]

I'm still looking for a bra, like the ones the Fembots used in Austin Powers

 

[radou]

I'm still looking for a bra, like the ones the Fembots used in Austin Powers

If you promise to take a photo of you wearing it and post it, I'll design one for you personally and send it to you.

 

[Danger]

If you promise to take a photo of you wearing it and post it, I'll design one for you personally and send it to you.

Damn, you beat me to it!
Perhaps your bazooka is adequate after all.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I think the guy is headed for a Darwin Award.

 

[turbo]

I think the guy is headed for a Darwin Award.

It is possible, if there is confusion in a situation, or a cop is a little nervous. There have been instances of plain-looking belt buckles concealing small-caliber guns, and of buckles that look decorative, but that feature removable functioning (not just decorative) derringers. They are far outnumbered by cheap decorative belt buckles cast in the shape of guns.

It's kind of silly to broadcast that kind of thing, though. If I wanted to carry a gun, I'd get a carry permit and start lugging my Glock 20 concealed, though after a few weeks of lugging that monster, I'd probably start looking for a Walther PPK as a preferred hide-away.

For those who came into the movie late, Glock created a furor amongst the "willingly ignorant" who claimed that the guns' polycarbonate frames would make them "invisible" to airport X-rays. That's bull****, and anybody who knows anything about handguns could look at an X-ray of a Glock (or the components thereof) and make a pretty good guess about which model it is. Of course, the Glocks immediately became favorites for police use, once they were trialed. My Glock 20 is chambered for 10mm Auto, and because it is a very powerful round with high magazine capacities, it was seen as a shoo-in to replace .45 ACP, .357 mag, 9mm, etc for police work. The problem? Cops actually have to have the physical capabilities to control their sight picture when firing high-recoil rounds, and they have to train with these rounds without getting fatigued and gun-shy. Unfortunately, the trend to consider all officers "equal", regardless of their abilities in this regard led to the acceptance of sidearms with lighter loads, because some fraction of the police force was unable or unwilling to train to use the more powerful round effectively. That is sad, because with a little training, a 5'2" woman like my wife can get incredibly accurate and consistent with this handgun, and the center of gravity is so low in this design that the gun seems to climb, rather than rock on discharge, so that the handgun can be quickly brought back to target.

 

[DaveC426913]

It is possible, if there is confusion in a situation, or a cop is a little nervous. There have been instances of plain-looking belt buckles concealing small-caliber guns, and of buckles that look decorative, but that feature removable functioning (not just decorative) derringers. They are far outnumbered by cheap decorative belt buckles cast in the shape of guns.

It's kind of silly to broadcast that kind of thing, though. If I wanted to carry a gun, I'd get a carry permit and start lugging my Glock 20 concealed, though after a few weeks of lugging that monster, I'd probably start looking for a Walther PPK as a preferred hide-away.

For those who came into the movie late, Glock created a furor amongst the "willingly ignorant" who claimed that the guns' polycarbonate frames would make them "invisible" to airport X-rays. That's bull****, and anybody who knows anything about handguns could look at an X-ray of a Glock (or the components thereof) and make a pretty good guess about which model it is. Of course, the Glocks immediately became favorites for police use, once they were trialed. My Glock 20 is chambered for 10mm Auto, and because it is a very powerful round with high magazine capacities, it was seen as a shoo-in to replace .45 ACP, .357 mag, 9mm, etc for police work. The problem? Cops actually have to have the physical capabilities to control their sight picture when firing high-recoil rounds, and they have to train with these rounds without getting fatigued and gun-shy. Unfortunately, the trend to consider all officers "equal", regardless of their abilities in this regard led to the acceptance of sidearms with lighter loads, because some fraction of the police force was unable or unwilling to train to use the more powerful round effectively. That is sad, because with a little training, a 5'2" woman like my wife can get incredibly accurate and consistent with this handgun, and the center of gravity is so low in this design that the gun seems to climb, rather than rock on discharge, so that the handgun can be quickly brought back to target.

Um. you don't get many chances to talk about your hobby, do you?

 

[turbo]

Um. you don't get many chances to talk about your hobby, do you?

It's worse than that. Firearms was not a hobby, but my livelihood for a number of years, though mostly confined to firearms and militaria of the Revolutionary/Civil War periods and similar, with some concentration on high-end (30, 40, 50K) sporting arms of the 20thC. Due to health problems, I have been unable to work in any setting open to the public, though my interest in firearms is unabated.

 

[Mk]

Um. you don't get many chances to talk about your hobby, do you?

*ahem* I found that very interesting and exciting.

my livelihood for a number of years, though mostly confined to firearms and militaria of the Revolutionary/Civil War periods and similar, with some concentration on high-end (30, 40, 50K) sporting arms of the 20thC.

What did you do?

 

[turbo]

What did you do?

Mostly, I gathered high-end collections of museum-grade historical objects and arranged to get them offered at auctions. Much of the job involved cutting through fluff and crap, but it's nice when you can present and object or an ensemble that is clearly linked without having to make apologies.

 

[Math Is Hard]

It's worse than that. Firearms was not a hobby, but my livelihood for a number of years, though mostly confined to firearms and militaria of the Revolutionary/Civil War periods and similar, with some concentration on high-end (30, 40, 50K) sporting arms of the 20thC. Due to health problems, I have been unable to work in any setting open to the public, though my interest in firearms is unabated.

Did you have a shop?

 

[Smurf]

It's illegal to have a gun in a bank even if you don't do anything with it?

I think banks have the right to say they don't want you to take guns into them. And to call the police if you do.

 

[turbo]

Did you have a shop?

No, I worked for an established auctioneer, getting an on-line sales presence established. He had a firearms division that was struggling, and the person heading it up was quitting (no great loss) and he and the GM forced me to take that high-stress job "temporarily" while they searched for a permanent replacement. During my tenure of five years, the division's gross revenues went from about $4M/year to over $15M/year. Obviously, I gave them little incentive to replace me, and was stuck with that position until a dispute about my compensation and accommodation for my medical disability became an issue and we parted ways.

Anyway, the fun part of the job was dealing with high-end collectors and expert consultants and learning from them. If you ever watch the Antiques Roadshow and see the various military-collectible consultants appraising guns, swords, flags, military documents, powder horns, etc, those are the guys I worked with routinely. If I was offered an item for auction and was not sufficiently familiar with it, I would just call one or two of these guys (and gals, in the case of CSA flags) and pick their brains. Many of these people "wrote the book" on their specialties (sometimes many books) and if you go to a Barnes and Noble, you'll find them well-represented. Sometimes, they were intimately familiar with the particular item in question and occasionally, the item in question was fake, and they would tell me how to detect the signs of the fakery. After all, there are not too many battle-captured Confederate flags in private hands, nor that many Custer artifacts, etc, and the motivation to take some old relatively worthless cloth and fashion a "Confederate" flag with unit markings (perhaps salable for $150,000or more if real) is VERY high.

 

[Just some guy]

You'd think that maybe, just maybe it would have been a sensible idea for the guy to change belts or not wear one at all before walking into the bank :/

Then again maybe not, it makes a great story for him to tell :p:

 

[turbo]

Most belt-buckles that are shaped like guns are really tiny, because (let's face it) nobody would wear a belt buckle as large as a Colt Single-Action Army or a Model 1911 or any of the modern revolvers meant to chamber the .357 mag, etc. These guns can really fill your hand, and could not be mistaken for a belt-buckle replica by anybody who has ever seen them. Maybe the guy should have waited outside, knowing that ignorance and over-reaction could ensue, but he probably never gave it a second thought.

 

[Smurf]

might be that the police are still just up tight cause of the whole terrorism scare and what have you.