I am no gun expert, so you all correct me if what I say makes no sense. It seems like there is some risk to transporting a loaded firearm by air in checked luggage. It seems appropriate to prohibit that conduct, and a fine for failing to do so seems reasonable to punish those that put other travelers at some, albeit small, risk. Jail time seems quite excessive, as does $11,000. More like $500 to $1000.00 for not unloading the checked firearm.
There is no risk at all unless a round is chambered, and even then almost zero risk if the trigger and trigger guard are completely covered. Firearms don't fire themselves.
Otherwise we'd hear every day about how another Air Marshal's pistol blew another hole in another airplane.
The fine is excessive and the charges suck, but compared to the rest of Colorado, Denver City and County and her LE have an incredible hard on for firearms (to the point where they get away with breaking the State Constitution and ban a number of things under our relatively obscure "home rule" laws for cities, which did go to Federal Court where they found a sympathetic Judge to their cause in the .10th District, and the State lost on Appeal).
While the law is completely different for airline travel, and airports, Denver cops are mostly on board with Denver's goofiness, they're completely in bed with ENORMOUS amounts of DHS money (ever since the Democratic Convention here, which bought numerous jurisdictions all sorts of interesting toys and millions and millions on dispatch infrastructure upgrades) and generally will "throw the book at" anyone with a firearm.
(Conversely, in most of the rest of the State other than perhaps Boulder, officers will just yawn when they see a firearm in a bag with a magazine inserted, and would probably be more of the "common sense" variety of story mentioned above. "You can't have that magazine inserted in that in the case. Here let me remove that for you. Nice Smith & Wesson!")
So the guy is pretty much screwed. Taking it to Court in the 10th probably isn't a great idea either.
Like some others have pointed out, I'm not a big fan of someone carrying a firearm through airport(s) who can't be bothered to read the rules available via a two second Google search -- but he caused no harm, and intended no harm.
He just picked the wrong city to not be treated as the enemy instead of a Citizen who made a mistake, by officers and their elected leaders.
This is the same police force that's spent $3M to defend an officer with multiple violence complaints against him. They are the very definition of a department that won't clean house and wants to keep the big money flowing in any way they can.
Plus, remember. Government these days thinks a $10K fine is just chump change. See their budgets for references as to why.
The young man made a mistake in the wrong place. Denver PD and TSA will not let him forget it. That's just their normal mode of operation.
As far as the worry about checking them goes, there's no worry there for me at all. In fact, since you are NOT supposed to utilize a TSA approved lock that they can open themselves, packing a firearm is a great way to actually be allowed to properly secure your luggage! LOL.
A nice case, your own lock, and a Glock stuffed in with your underwear and t-shirts! Haha. I joke but I know two people who do it. One actually uses a piece of crap .22 pistol he wouldn't trust to fire without it self-destructing just to put it in checked luggage.
