Posted on May 18, 2026
CCW Safe Podcast: Traveling With Firearms
CCW Safe President Kent Brown talks with Luke McCoy from USACarry.com about traveling with firearms.
Kent Brown (00:00)
Hey, hello and welcome to the CCW Safe Podcast. We’re now in May of 2026 and want to welcome all of our CCW Safe members, our newsletter subscribers, and just all the other folks who are watching this podcast today and part of our audience. Today we have a special guest. We have Luke McCoy from USACarry.com and we’re going to talk about a topic I think will be of interest to a lot of the viewers today which is traveling with firearms but first I want to give Luke the opportunity to do a little introduction tell people about you your background and what you’re doing over there at USACarry.com
Luke McCoy (00:40)
Thanks for having me on. I am Luke McCoy from usacarry.com and USA Carry on all the social channels. I started USA Carry in 2007 kind of as a resource site for concealed carriers. I always built websites out of my hobbies and this one kind of took off. So I just wanted to provide laws and how to get your permits in every state because back then it was kind of just hard to figure out how to get it.
some of the police websites were out of date or didn’t tell you how to do it. So was trying to have one central place with all that information. And I was the first one to come out with the interactive concealed carry maps back then, which make it easy to know where you can carry, which states allow you to carry in and which don’t. And some community forums, which were a lot more popular back then before kind of Facebook and social media kind of killed forums. But that was the gist of it. And I had been running that since and
Luke McCoy (01:32)
Now I do all that still, but I’m also covering a lot of defensive gun use incidents, firearm news, doing a lot of video content. So, a little bit of everything.
Kent Brown (01:42)
Right. Yeah, that’s really cool. was 2007 is a really long time ago, right? And particularly in today’s world, you know, we started our company in 2011. We have our 15th anniversary coming up in August. So it’s really interesting. Luke, tell people like, what even led to you creating that first website? You know, how did you get the interest in concealed carry and firearms education and really wanting to help people?
Luke McCoy (01:47)
It’s been a minute, yeah.
So like I said, I’ve been a web developer since I was like 18, 19, I would create websites around my hobbies. I was living in Las Vegas at the time, so 2005, 2006, somewhere in there. And a friend of mine, a childhood friend of mine and another friend of mine were down in the French Quarter. They got robbed and the robber shot him in the chest with a shotgun and my friend died in my other friend’s arms.
So I had recently just got my first firearm. I grew up with guns. My dad grew up with Berettas and Taurus’s. He was in the military. So I had just got my first firearm. Then that happened and I decided, all right, I’m gonna get my concealed carry permit. Hopefully I can protect myself and my family, which led me to get my first concealed carry gun. And then I started taking defensive classes and been doing that ever since.
Kent Brown (03:01)
You know, it’s interesting and it’s a tragic story, obviously, that led to you becoming interested in these kinds of things. And we see that pattern, you know, even the beginning of CCW Safe, what, you know, resulted from an incident that Mike Darter, our founder, when he was an on-duty police officer and the legal ramifications of what happened, you know, executing as a law enforcement officer had all kinds of things that went on with it.
And it seems that that’s an unfortunate pattern for a lot of folks is they find out about not just about self-defense, but they find out about the need to be educated, the ramifications of defending yourself, the ramifications of defending yourself with a firearm and that their perception of how things are going to go is not usually how it goes.
Yeah, and so I think sites like yours and of course all of our educational materials and our whole mission here is really a noble one where it’s like we have the right to defend ourselves. We have, you know, all these tools and resources now, but you can’t just go out there without being armed physically and mentally and even emotionally for that.
from that standpoint. And so I would just encourage all the people watching this today, right? Your perception of what the law might be or how the police are going to react is probably not in line with reality. It doesn’t mean that you’re crazy or at you know, some far end of the spectrum, but you know, what you think is perfect is probably not perfect. We’ve had very few members have an incident where we, when we look at it, we think, man,
that they really did everything well. And by the way, nobody’s gonna do everything well every time because you’re under a significant amount of stress, you’re in fear of severe bodily injury or death. So something is going to go wrong. And I think resources like yours, ours, there’s plenty of other places too is a good place for folks to tune in.
and find out maybe where the gaps are in their knowledge. we’ll get to the topic of the podcast in a minute, but ask your opinion. As you’re out and you’re talking to a lot of folks, you’re interacting with a lot of folks who are taking defensive pistol classes and doing all that, it seems to me that there’s just so much focus on the operation of the firearm that
The other parts of that sort of don’t get the focus. Do you see that when you’re out there?
Luke McCoy (05:38)
Yeah, people just wanna get their gun and go shoot, but yeah, there’s a lot more to it. For the past couple years, one of our neighbors in Las Vegas that I would say more leans to the left. He’s heard me talk about guns and he’s like, okay, kind of get me, he’s like, I wanna go shooting with you. You don’t sound like one of those gun people, you’re responsible. And even my girlfriend’s brother and his wife.
Luke McCoy (06:01)
have recently started getting guns, they got their CCW permit. And it’s just interesting to see them kind of go through it and I’m able to help them, talk to them about CCW Safe concealed carry insurance, why you want it, why you should always carry, going through all that stuff. So it’s interesting.
Kent Brown (06:02)
Thank you.
Right.
Yeah, you know, I do a fair amount of podcasts here and there and get asked a lot of questions about what our members go through. And of course, we don’t really talk about the incidents in detail while they’re going on, but maybe after those are over, sometimes we do. We have an object lesson. But one of the things I do find myself saying all the time on these types of programs is
Everybody’s not everybody, but most of the people are doing a good job of training with the firearm, right? They’re shooting, you know, one, two, three, five, six, 20 times a year. You know, there, there’s a plethora of information out there to help you get trained. There’s great instructors all over the country. And, and somebody asked me, well, what else should they train? You know, if there’s one other thing they should train. I said,
At the very least, my advice to somebody would be, you just train your brain for what you’re going to say to the police and how you’re going to interact with them? Because if you defend yourself with the firearm, even if you just take it out and you don’t discharge it, you’re going to end up talking to the police most likely. So train yourself in how to talk to the police and what kinds of things you should say and shouldn’t say. And then, know, there’s a segment of the…
Luke McCoy (07:22)
Mm-hmm.
Kent Brown (07:31)
people out there who were like, I’m gonna, you I have an attorney or you guys are getting my attorney and I’m not, well, you know, the attorney doesn’t show up in two minutes, right? And you don’t have to say anything, but you need to learn how to say nothing the appropriate way and express that you’re gonna cooperate and really put yourself in a position to be successful with that interaction. it’s always interesting to me, you know, how to.
how do we get the focus on some of these other things, you so people can navigate these more effectively. Yeah.
Luke McCoy (08:01)
I like even talking to
the media, I cover these, you know, defensive gun use incidents a lot. And a lot of times I’m watching the news coverage. I’m like, I wouldn’t have gone on the news and said that or so. Just got to watch what you say or know what you need. You know, know what you said, what you’re saying. So.
Kent Brown (08:12)
For sure. Yeah.
You know, we advise our members on that and then we fake it into sort of a very high profile incident. And we’ve had some, some that people, know, if we mentioned the details here on this call, there’s a lot of people who would know these incidents. And we actually hire a third party media specialist to help the member and the attorney team manage that side of it. Because we don’t really want the, you know,
the member out talking publicly about their incident. We had one not too long ago where it wasn’t a publicly well-known incident, but after the incident, we were just in the middle of helping him. We just got the attorney. I this was all within like a five-day window and he was so happy, which is great, what we were doing and that’s good. And he made some social media posts about…
us and we’re like, Hey, that’s cool. But you need like, we’re taking these down. Like you don’t do not do this, right? You’re, don’t know where this case is going. You don’t need to be doing this. This is really actually damaging. We love you and appreciate the kudos, but let’s save that for when it’s all over. So there’s a, there’s a lot of things in it. You know, for folks watching this, Luke has a lot of content. have a lot of content on the site that I think is useful. And I would encourage everybody to get to that and find things, you we have to at least two or three pieces out there of the top 10 things to say or do with the police after an incident. Please go watch that. But the reason we’re actually here today is just a topic of interest to our members where Luke has a particularly heavy amount of experience and expertise and that’s traveling with firearms.
Most people don’t do it like you’re traveling virtually every week with a firearm. there are a lot of, you know, federal laws and regulations, state, local laws and regulations. And it can be a little bit overwhelming for folks to do that. So if you’re watching today, this is the primary reason that Luke is here to share with us a little bit about.
Luke McCoy (10:00)
Right.
Kent Brown (10:16)
his experience, how often he’s doing it, and then we’ll kind of walk through the step-by-step of his best practices on how to do it within the law and be successful.
Luke McCoy (10:27)
Yeah, so ⁓ I spend, go ahead.
Kent Brown (10:27)
Yes. Yeah. Maybe just tell everybody how often you’re traveling
and maybe just tell everybody like how frequently you’re traveling with firearms and multiple airline, you know, give them a flavor for like, this is not something you do once a year and you know it. It’s like you’re doing a lot.
Luke McCoy (10:44)
Yeah, so I spend half my time in Nevada, half my time in Louisiana, so I’m flying literally every week with firearms. Been kind of doing that since 2000, 2001. One day I just said, all right, I’m gonna put my little Insta360 on and film the check-in process and upload it. And that video did very well, so I started filming all of them. So now we’re at 55 episodes in and…
I just started filming it, know, because I was doing it anyway, but then I started seeing the comments and like after I had a lot of episodes, people are commenting and saying like, I’ve been watching your videos, it’s making me a lot more comfortable so I can do it myself, seeing how, because usually, I think only one or two of my videos there’s been issues. Usually it’s very painless and quick, checking the firearms and it shows how smooth it can go. So I think it’s actually helping people. So I take screenshots of all those comments every time and when I get comments that like, you’re just showing off. I’m like, nope, this is why. And I’ll just spam them with comments of people that are thanking me for doing this and it’s helping them. So.
Kent Brown (11:41)
It’s an intimidating topic, right? Particularly if you’re first time traveling with firearms or you just do it infrequently, it’s intimidating because of all the laws, you have TSA regulations, have airlines have different regulations, right? Maybe if you want to just kind of get us a little overview of sort of the TSA stuff and then maybe how the airlines have their own deal.
Luke McCoy (12:03)
Airlines.
Yeah, I’d say the TSA guidelines are pretty straightforward. And then you have the airline guidelines, which can differ depending on the airline, depending on the agent you have. It just depends. Do they know all the policies? So, I mean, generally firearms need to be in a locked hard-sided case that can be inside another piece of luggage or not. Every locking point on the case needs to have
a lock on it, so you can’t just have one lock and empty. They’ll usually have a problem with that.
The locks per TSA regulations can be any type of lock. So it could be TSA-recognized locks, which means the TSA has a master key and can open it up, or it can be a non-TSA-recognized locks. The problem with that is sometimes the agents…
ask you is that a TSA approved lock and they’re thinking TSA recognized lock when they’re saying the wrong term and they think you need a TSA approved lock. So I just say yes to that from now on. It’s a TSA approved lock, but it’s not a TSA recognized lock. So that’s where things can kind of get different between the TSA’s policy versus the agent you’re talking to.
Kent Brown (13:21)
It doesn’t work.
So the TSA doesn’t require that the lock be one where they have a master for, right.
Luke McCoy (13:30)
No, it can be any lock and they say, TSA’s policy says you’re the only one that can have that key and be in possession of that key unless the TSA asks you for the key to inspect the case. And that’s kind of a whole other issue that I see arise in sometimes.
Kent Brown (13:49)
That’s interesting. So if the TSA wants the key so they can inspect, like when does that happen? So you’re at the counter and you check the bag and we’ll talk about the airlines in a minute, but you make it through that part. Where does the bag go and what happens next?
Luke McCoy (14:03)
So that all depends on the airport. So once you declare the firearm, I’m out of New Orleans, MSY airport and Las Vegas. Both of those airports, once you check the bag, they’ll take the bag and put it on the conveyor belt and it goes to TSA and it’ll go through an X-ray. In New Orleans one time, I had a very large rifle case that didn’t fit in their X-ray. So this is before I started waiting for 15 minutes, whether the airlines ask you to wait 15 minutes or not before going through security. I just wait 15 minutes because of this. You have a question about that?
Kent Brown (14:40)
In some cases, the airlines, they take the bag, they put it on the belt, but they say, don’t go through security for 15 minutes in case it wants, we need to open it or in case TSA wants it. I got it. Okay.
Luke McCoy (14:50)
Right. I never get asked that in New Orleans Airport, Las Vegas, it’s always go stand by the flag pole. I’m sure if anybody flew through Las Vegas with firearms knows exactly what I’m talking about. It’s right, there’s a flag pole right outside where if TSA needs you, you’re right there. And I just set my timer for 15 minutes, whether or not I get asked or not, because the first time with that large rifle case, it didn’t fit in their X-ray. So I went through security.
Luke McCoy (15:17)
And of course my gate was all the way at the end of the airport. So I had just sat down and Spirit called me up before they went bankrupt and closed down. And TSA wanted the keys to my case. So I went all the way back through security to the Spirit desk and that’s when I said, well, I wanna be there when you open my case. They said, I can’t. And I started pushing the issue. So then they brought me down to TSA. One of the TSA agent came out and kind of treated me like a criminal. Like, why won’t you give us the key? And he was like very, I’m like, why are you so close to me? I had to take a step back. I’m like, I’ve got a lot of expensive guns in there. I wanna see people going through it. And in the end, you gotta decide, are you gonna push the issue and miss your flight or let them have the keys? So I let them have the keys. Nothing was missing when I got to where I was going, thankfully. So you kind of have to. Think about that, you know, if you don’t wanna mess with any of that, then you can use TSA recognized locks. I like keeping the key to my locks and if they need the keys, hopefully I can get in. Sometimes they’ll, I’ve heard people, sometimes they’ll bring them to a special room where they’ll inspect the case in front of them. Sometimes you can’t. So it’s really just depends on the airport, depends on the agent. I try to just go with the flow. Like that time I felt like I was getting a little.
frustrated and that’s, you’re not gonna get anywhere if you start arguing. It’s their policies, whatever. So I just try to be as nice as possible and go with the flow. That’s the only time that’s happened to me and that’s before I was even, I don’t even think I was filming these. may have been, but that’s the only time I’ve had them ask for my keys, so.
Kent Brown (16:39)
I’m sure.
Pretty rare. if they, but if you’re using or somebody watching this podcast uses the TSA recognized lock that they have a master, they can open that anytime. They don’t have to tell you that they’ve inspected it. They can do their own thing if they feel like it. And so people should be prepared for that may happen. Yeah.
Luke McCoy (17:13)
Right, right, and I was just watching a video last night, Nick Young from VLocks Training Group, he had a video about flying with guns, and he just recently had an incident where they, he’s saying basically the same thing as me, try to be nice, if they ask for your keys, you can ask to open it in front of you, but that’s probably not gonna happen, but he gave him his keys, they gave him it back to him, they said one of the guns were loaded, which they weren’t.
When he got to his destination, there was a knife missing. So he’s like, okay, I knew what happened to that knife. Like they asked for my keys. They went through everything. Somebody took a knife, locked it back up and gave him his keys back. So, right. So I get that question a lot. What if your bags go missing? What if you’re, you know, they steal a gun? Well, you know, I’ll just deal with that. It’s, I’ve never had a bag go missing. I’ll deal with that when it happens. You know, I’ve got, you know, insurance on my firearm. So if something goes missing, then.
Luke McCoy (18:10)
You know, I’ve got a few other firearms around here I can use in the meantime. So, right.
Kent Brown (18:14)
See that, yeah.
Yeah, it’s really interesting. just for clarity, and I think people figured this out already, right? We’re talking about checking firearms and we’re talking about checking in bags at the counter. We’re not talking really today about any TSA that would occur at the checkpoint, which hopefully everybody watching this knows you don’t even bring the firearm near the checkpoint. You know, just for those who, and we have a lot of members who are like you, they’re.
Kent Brown (18:44)
avid shooters and we actually have a coverage in our plans for folks. So they say they have a backpack and they have some ammo rounds in the bottom or an empty magazine. Those are going to be a problem at the checkpoint at TSA 100%. If they see that on the scanner, you are going to get pulled aside and could potentially end up with some, you know, civil charges, federal charges, local charges. We’ve seen a vast
Luke McCoy (18:54)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Kent Brown (19:09)
spectrum of how those are handled depending upon the airport. But we do for our members on certain plans, they can call us and get some assistance with that if it’s accidental, you know, and it’s through the checkpoint. But of course, if you’re watching today, don’t take empty bags, don’t take loaded bags, you know, check your bag if you’re using the same backpack.
that you use when you go to the range or even have the firearm in it, you’re just increasing the risk that you’re gonna forget. Even those swabs that they do, now you can have some residue in there that they’re not gonna like. And so my advice to people is to just get yourself another bag. I know you love that bag, but you can carry all your stuff in, but do something else. We had an incident here in Oklahoma City
Kent Brown (19:56)
Where was one of our employees had a loaded bag in their bag and forgot about it and Oklahoma City was really great. They were like, hey, we can throw it away or you can take it back to your car and you know, they were like, yeah, deal. Well, you you can imagine if you did that in Las Vegas or LAX or LaGuardia or somewhere like that. It’s not.
Luke McCoy (20:07)
Take it.
New Jersey.
Kent Brown (20:17)
And we’ve had members just with literally one round of ammo in some of those major metros and it just is very problematic and you can misapply it in all kinds of other pain. So we’ll come back to the checkbacks in a minute, but please, know, for all you guys watching, either search that bag meticulously, all the pockets, all the zippers, all creases and the folds and get it cleaned or just use another bag. You won’t regret it.
Luke McCoy (20:28)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I broke my rule about not using my bags at the range once and it was my camera bag and I think it was within the last year or two and they pulled my bag aside and I had one spent casing at the bottom of the bag that was underneath something and I was like, no. He’s like, I’ll throw it away, it’s all good. I’m like, cool. So yeah, don’t use your bag and bring it to the, don’t use your bag as a range bag, get something separate. So again, I broke my own rule that time and.
Kent Brown (21:03)
Yeah, it’s like…
We actually had a member traveling and they had the firearm in the bag. And I’m not going to name the airports, but they were big airports. And it went through the scanner at their departure airport and did not even get seen. And then.
Luke McCoy (21:18)
Mm-hmm.
wow.
Kent Brown (21:30)
Yes, and so their clue is that this thing is in there. I mean, it’s a hard way to find out, of course, at the airport if you’re firing there. I promise you your day and many other days are ruined. But it got caught on the return when they were going through the airport. of course, you can imagine they were kind of stunned, my gosh, how did it not get caught? to be fair,
Kent Brown (21:53)
The departure airport would probably would have been a much better place than where their return was from. It was a very sort of, you know, liberal city where it’s likely much, much tougher instead of saying,
empty casing, just throw it away, that would have been problematic. So again, know, please, please, please, please just use different bags. Now back to the luggage. People always ask us, sorry, last thing is they’re like, you don’t want members to get into these types of problems because you have to spend money to help them. And the answer to that is no, we don’t mind that at all. That’s what we’re here for. We don’t want them to go through it. Like the money does not make the mental anguish that inconvenient.
Kent Brown (22:33)
the potential loss of freedom. That’s the problematic stuff and we don’t want anybody to go through that at all. So please understand we’re here to help you if you have some accidents or you get involved in your incidents, of course, but anything you can do to avoid self-defense incident, if possible, TSA violations, any of the things that we cover, please stop and think about that.
Kent Brown (22:57)
I would just now kind of think, have you seen anything Luke from the airline specific stuff that where there’s a particular airline that has a policy or kind of a process where you think differently or do differently or are they consistent enough that it’s kind of like the same?
Luke McCoy (23:19)
Lately, it’s been good. When you say that, it brings me up to spirit. But again, they’re not an airline anymore. there was a window for about, I feel like two years that they would want to know the make and models of the firearms in the case, which made no sense. And a lot of times they want me to open the case just to look at the guns, which we can get into that too, but there’s no reason for that. So it’s just lot of times Spirit was not aware of their own policies, including their supervisors. There’s one incident, it’s think episode 30 and 31. It’s like one day it went completely wrong. I went to get on my flight, it got canceled, went home. The second day it went completely correct. just, it’s…
Kent Brown (24:03)
Same bag,
same everything, same airport, yeah.
Luke McCoy (24:04)
Same exact everything. And it was smooth. So I put both of those episodes together just to show like, okay, what happened here? And I had a supervisor come out and look at their carriage. What is it? The contract, the carriage, which had just been updated that day. And I had it on my phone and I’m pointing stuff out and they didn’t want to hear it. I don’t care. I don’t want to hear it. Like, so you don’t want to know your own policies. No. So that was really the problem I had with them. But lately, like I’ve been on
A lot of Southwest flights, I just flew Delta, Frontier, smooth, everybody knew what they were doing. Delta likes to put a zip tie on your bag to secure it. That was the only, and then you pick it up from the baggage office of that airline and you’re free to go. So it was a smooth process. And then I used my trauma shears just to cut the zip tie and was on my way.
Kent Brown (24:56)
Any other airlines asked to see the guns? that really more of just a spirit thing?
Luke McCoy (25:02)
That was only spirit. that’s what I had a problem. One day I just was like, there’s no reason to look at it. So I kind of pushed back on it and I was asking, well, why do you want to look at them? And they’re like, to see if they’re unloaded. And I’m like, you’re not going to be able to tell if they’re unloaded. And they couldn’t understand that. And the way my guns were packed in the case, had, you know, the pistols were in sleeves and I’m like, are you going to touch the guns? No. Then you’re not going to know if they’re unloaded or not. And it’s not, it’s not the airline’s job to figure out if they’re unloaded or not. The form you’re signing is declaring that they’re unloaded. And then TSA scans it and they’ll have, they’ll contact you if it’s loaded or not. So it’s not the agents airline, it’s not the airlines job to know if it’s packed right. So.
Kent Brown (25:48)
Interesting. Yeah, I would think the last thing they want to do is touch those firearms for a whole number of reasons. Yeah.
Luke McCoy (25:54)
yeah. Right. I got to the point to where I would open the firearm. I would open the case to show them. And that’s as far as I would go if I was asked just because, and this is one thing. So if the hard side of case is by itself, this declaration form goes on the inside of the case. So if you’re declaring, if you just have the case by itself, you fill all this out, you’re going to unlock the case and you’re going to slip this in there and close it. So technically,
You are opening the case sometimes. I, if it’s inside another piece of luggage, then it goes on the outside of the case. So I usually fly with, with the case inside another piece of luggage. So they’ll take this and they’ll tape it with packing tape to the outside of the case or one of the baggage stickers. They’ll stick it on there or everybody likes this tip. I just get free FedEx shipping sleeves that are like the transparent sleeves. I put that on the case.
Luke McCoy (26:48)
I throw this in there and close it and all the agents are like, that’s so smart. Thanks. You’re doing our workforce. So a little tip there, but I, but that’s why I would open the case sometimes just because I was like, okay, I’ll open it. It’ll make things move smoother. They’re not going to touch it. If it was by itself, I’d have to open it anyway, but anything beyond that, I would probably, you know, request a supervisor, which I’ve done before and the supervisor didn’t know what they were doing. And I would have asked for like a TSA agent to come over and tell them what the policy actually is.
Kent Brown (27:18)
Has it ever come to that where you the TSA agent has had to come over for the check-in process? ⁓
Luke McCoy (27:24)
No, like I said, I think it was episode 30 to where finally I just gave up and I’m like fine here It’s open and they didn’t even i’m like, what are you gonna do about it now? And they’re like, okay, you can close it. I’m like you didn’t even look at anything so they were just fighting to You know be wrong and well be be right when they were wrong. I guess I don’t know
Kent Brown (27:43)
Well, you know, think that probably the takeaway for people watching this is, you know, you need to know what the process is. You know, it’s good to know what the airlines policy is. And then at the same time, know that.
Luke McCoy (27:53)
Mm-hmm.
Kent Brown (27:59)
If you’re following the TSA guidelines, you just need to navigate these people at the counter. So you get the things on and you get this sticker on it or in it, whichever it needs to be, and you carry on and that, you know, standing there and trying to win an argument isn’t doing anything except making it right. It’s not going to.
Luke McCoy (28:15)
Not gonna happen, you’re miss your flight.
Kent Brown (28:19)
Make anything better or worse with TSA, they’re not even going to be aware of it. The bag’s going to come down and they’re going to make their own decision on whether they should look in there or not. And so, yeah, yeah. You know, think even in the self-defense world, it’s like so many people feel the need to be right. And it just complicates the situations and in some cases escalates situations and we don’t even want that to happen when we’re checking our firearms at the airport. So much less have that happened.
Luke McCoy (28:36)
Mm-hmm.
Kent Brown (28:48)
you know, in a situation that could lead to self-defense. cause even I figured out after, you know, I’ve been here almost five years, there’s some incidents, there’s situations now where I’m like, who cares who’s right? You know, I want to be Safe. I want to go home. I want to my family. I don’t want to deal with police insurance, whatever, all the horrible things that can happen. I’m happy for someone else to think they were right and I’m gone. So the same mindset.
Luke McCoy (29:12)
Exactly. I’m fine once a week. I just want to get to where
I’m going. You want me to open a case here? Okay, here. Look at it. Cool. Close it up, lock it and let it go.
Kent Brown (29:17)
Right.
For sure. For sure. It’s really, I can say, I think it’s a very intimidating topic for folks because they’re so worried. There’s such a hyper, you know, intense focus on, you know, Oh, do I get it wrong? Can I do it? Can I not do it? And, you know, obviously the answer is you can do it. And it sounds to me like there’s just basic things that you have to do. It’s not a highly complex situation. You need the right case. You need the right locks.
You need to understand whether it’s going to be in a bag or not in a bag. There’s a one declaration. Now the declaration paperwork may have that at the check encounter that’s there.
Luke McCoy (30:02)
Yeah, that can be different.
That’s airline based. like this one is, I didn’t black out my signature. So the signature’s on the back, but this one has some different info on here. This is a Southwest one. Sometimes they’ll fill it out for you. Sometimes they just hand it to you to fill out. So this one, they ask for your name, address, city, state, the flight number, the P and R number, which is just your confirmation number. So if you ever,
Kent Brown (30:11)
That’s right.
Gotcha.
Luke McCoy (30:30)
Go to Southwest and you’re like, what’s the PNR number? It’s just your flight’s confirmation number. Now Delta, I flew with them last week or so. It was just a signature. I just had to sign it that was it. There was no other information on here. So these are just airlines own forms.
Kent Brown (30:48)
They always have one, even if they’re different. There’s never no airline that doesn’t make you sign something.
Luke McCoy (30:50)
Yes, yes.
Yes, and at one point Spirit would make me sign one for every single gun that I had in the case, which I, and I found in their carriage, their contracted carriage, that it did say that. And I’m like, well, that just makes no sense. Cause the models weren’t listed on it. I just had to fill out, you know, eight of them because I was flying with eight guns that day and they all went in the same spot. So again, dumb policy, but just go with it and be on your way. But Spirit’s not around anymore, so.
Kent Brown (31:01)
And think for a lot of people watching, the goal is comply with the law, decrease the amount of friction at the counter, and just carry on so you can get to your destination. Now, maybe we talk for a minute, Luke, about when you get to the destination, you’re going to get your baggage. It’s just going to come through normal baggage claim, and away you go.
Luke McCoy (31:46)
Maybe. It depends. It depends on the airline. It depends on the airport. It depends on the luggage carriers. What phase the moon might be in. It depends. So generally, if it’s a hard-sided case with locks on it, I’d say 70 % of the time, it’ll get hand-walked to the airline’s baggage office, where you’ll have to show your ID to pick it up.
Kent Brown (32:11)
⁓ OK.
Luke McCoy (32:13)
If it’s inside another piece of luggage, other than Delta, where they zip tie it and that tells that, and there’s also a slip on there that says, bring it to the airline office. But most of the time, if I have that box in another piece of luggage that looks like a regular piece of luggage, it’ll come out on the carousel. Now, sometimes the hard-sided case that’s locked, that isn’t supposed to come out on the carousel, comes out on the carousel. I’ve had my big rifle case where I’m staring, waiting at the, I’m looking at the office.
And then I see my rifle case just dump out onto the carousel. So I try to position myself between the baggage carousel and where I can see the office so I can just kind of monitor which ones it’s going to and also always use air tags so I can see on my phone where the bag is and kind of track it that way.
Kent Brown (32:42)
Yeah or not.
Nice. So for our members today watching, you get to baggage claim. Don’t be alarmed if it doesn’t come out on the carousel. In fact, it most likely won’t. You go to the baggage office, right? So that’s why I want to kind of cover the whole journey because, okay, we get through the check-in, it’s made it on the plane, but yeah, now there’s one more.
Luke McCoy (33:20)
Mm-hmm.
Kent Brown (33:21)
you gotta look out for. But even then, if it’s in the baggage office, I assume you’re just gonna show proof that it’s you, that the bag belongs to you, and then away you go after that. There’s no second.
Luke McCoy (33:30)
Yep. So you’ll just show your slip or your ID in, when I went to Delta last week, they asked for my tags. I gave them a tags, gave them my ID. They went in the back of the office, rolled it out to me, got it from there. Um, when I flew to the NRA annual meetings, so that was in Houston. We were standing around waiting for our bags. It never came out on the carousel. We were told six, then we were told five. Well, it apparently came out on three. So me and a few people were looking for our bags at the office and it was just standing.
somebody was standing with it over by three. So I’m like, good to know my bag with firearms were just hanging out, but it was all fine. Like, so you never know. So you kind of just have to go with the flow, you know?
Kent Brown (34:09)
But other than just proving that the bag belongs to you, which you do for any piece of luggage that goes to the airline office, like it gets delayed and you go back and pick it up yourself, you still got to prove it’s yours, but there’s no other additional paperwork, signatures, checks, right? So once you have it. Luke, maybe if you want to comment on, you know, the prep, like there’s preparation needed. So you’re going to fly with firearms and you live in your case, Louisiana, and you’re going to go to…
Luke McCoy (34:16)
Mm-hmm.
Kent Brown (34:37)
Ohio or somewhere, should folks be thinking about, well, okay, I got it there, but am I, are there laws there that it’s okay for me to have it here, you know, right? Yeah. Maybe just talk about that a little bit.
Luke McCoy (34:52)
Yep, first thing I would look at is if you have a concealed carry permit, do I have reciprocity there? Or if it’s a constitutional carry state, is constitutional carry allowed for non-residents? Start there first, and then you just need to know all the carry laws for that state if you plan on carrying or transporting the firearm. if you don’t have a concealed carry permit or you’re not recognized, you can still travel with that gun. It just needs to be under whatever that state’s guidelines are. The hard case might need to be locked in the trunk, inaccessible, maybe the ammo might need to be in a different part. I generally don’t go to those type of states, so I don’t have to deal with that. But I was booking flights for another convention that’s coming up in a few weeks. I could, it was two states I could fly into, both about the same distance from
where the convention was and I picked the one, I think South Carolina or North Carolina that had the better laws and I had reciprocity there.
Kent Brown (35:49)
Gotcha. Yeah, I think that’s important, right? It’s fine to get through the transportation part, but you really need to know what it is. I think most of the constitutional carrier states, if not all but one, do allow, you know, non-residents to carry on that. think is it North Dakota? Maybe it’s North Dakota is the one that does not allow that. Of course, not a lot of people are going there, but you do need to know, right? You know, we live in Oklahoma. Anybody can carry concealed or open. You don’t have to be a resident, right? You just have to be lawfully allowed to possess the firearm. So it does vary and it is kind of the checklist for folks is not just
Luke McCoy (36:03)
Mm-hmm.
Right. Yeah
Kent Brown (36:28)
Okay, now I’m understanding better how to get the bag checked, the equipment that I need to contain these things, and then when I get there, am I gonna comply with the laws? Because even to your point, right, you might land in one state and drive to another. So you need to check both of those things and not just assume, you know, I’m just gonna throw this in the trunk and nothing’s gonna happen because what if you get in an accident? Anything can happen being familiar with those laws. Of course, you have a section on your site with that information. We have a section on our site. I mean, there are places you can go and get this information relatively easily, but please just prepare folks watching today. Prepare yourself for the trip and the same thing, you know, with the trip back.
Luke McCoy (37:12)
Yeah, I’d say one of the most common questions I get too is, do you need a permit to declare firearms when you’re traveling? So that’s one of the more comments I get and obviously the answer is no, you just need to be able to legally own a firearm. They’re not checking serial numbers to see if it’s under your name or anything like that. get a lot of questions about that, but no.
Kent Brown (37:34)
Yeah, and I think you have some other sort of just general tips and advice like documenting things, maybe taking photos of what you have and why don’t you go through a few of those for folks, a few of the not, I don’t like.
Luke McCoy (37:46)
I make a list of what guns are in there. actually started doing that more when spirit was asking me what guns were in there. So they’d ask me what gun and you know, if I was carrying a Smith and Wesson that’s got the longest names ever, it’d be like Smith and Wesson performance, Semmer, and P nine, you know, carry comp. So I would just try to reduce those as much as possible to where, you know, Springfield Armory Hellcat Pro was just a Hellcat or so was just trying to, so they don’t ask that anymore, but I still keep track of what guns I’m flying with. I do take a picture. What else? There’s ammo. So if you’re flying with ammo, it can be in the hard case itself with the firearms, or it can just be in checked luggage. The ammo generally needs to be in the original manufacturer’s box or a box like this that’s designed to hold ammo.
Technically you can’t have more than 11 pounds. I’ve had my ammo checked twice. Once before, or the way, one time, a long time ago, think, yeah, a long time ago, was going in, or yeah, I was going out of Vegas and I had too much 300 blackouts, so I had to give them a couple cases of ammo just to get under the 11 pound limit, so.
They’ve checked me there and then one time recently they had me take, I think the box, the one box of case out and recheck them. Like, obviously this is not 10, 11 pounds, but there are ways around that. You can carry ammo in check luggage and it doesn’t need to be declared. So you can just check a bag that has ammo in it like a normal checked bag and they’re not gonna ask anything because there’s no firearms in that. So there’s ways around that, but.
Generally, I’m flying with just, if I’m flying with my carry gun, I just have a small box of ammo with me. And like I said, I’m living in both locations, so I’ve got ammo in both locations. So just carry enough to fill up my carry gun and feel that way. Some airlines allow you to have loaded magazines, obviously not in the gun. I think Southwest Policy does allow you to have ammo, loaded magazines, yeah.
So Southwest, the back of this form says loaded magazines or clips are packaged to prevent accidental activation of the primer. So that means they allow loaded magazines. I generally just don’t, just to keep TSA, like keep things running smoothly.
Kent Brown (40:16)
Yeah.
Well, again, like I said earlier, the whole idea is let’s reduce friction, right? Let’s don’t give them a reason to dig in there any more than is necessary, not because we have anything to hide, but just because there’s a lot of variability in the individual’s opinion on the policies. And when you’re at the airport, you are on a certain time schedule, so follow the law, be cooperative. You don’t have to admit on top of my head, I don’t know what 11 pounds of ammo looks like. And of course it depends on what kind of ammo it is, but it sounds like a fair amount to be traveling with. It’s not like a giant quantity, but you know, if you need more than 11 pounds, you probably should just be buying some on the other side.
Luke McCoy (40:52)
Right.
Yep, or get it online, ship it to where you’re going. It’s another way to do it.
Kent Brown (41:04)
Yeah. Interesting. Now back to other, like we talked about the ammo and being able to put that in a separate case. Just any advice for folks on the actual hard case that they get or, you know, are there brands or types or locations that are better to get those? Or is it, is it pretty straightforward?
Luke McCoy (41:27)
I mean, just as long as it’s a hard side of case that can be locked and then can’t be like pried open a stick of finger and I’ve heard people talking about, and that’s on my list of, say you only have one lock and this side over here doesn’t have a lock. I’ve heard people where they open the lock and pry it open. They’re like, nope, see how I can pry it open this much. It’s not allowed. So personally, I use Pelican cases, Condition One cases.
I have smaller like a stop box or a little vault tech case if I’m flying just with one a case like a stop box has and the vault techs have locks built into them. So it’s not a physical padlock. That’s fine too. ⁓ But I mean, anything from, I don’t know, maybe some of the better hard side of cases that come with your firearm. Sometimes those are kind of flimsy plastic, but generally that could work. Harbor freight has cases that’ll do just fine. you know, just whatever fits the gun that you bring, the guns you’re bringing. again, just make sure there’s a lock in each locking point. That’s one of the questions was like, are the problems I see mostly? And I saw, I think it was like a week or two ago, I was waiting to be checked in and I saw them discussing this rifle case that only had one lock on it. And I’m like, that’s probably getting kicked back. So.
Kent Brown (42:43)
So it probably had the points at the opposite ends too, aside from where the, yeah, and they just didn’t have them. So if you have a case, like I know those condition one cases have multiple points too, you putting a lock on everyone just to eliminate all doubt or do you check it and be like, no, nobody’s gonna get their finger in there and it’s okay or.
Luke McCoy (42:49)
Yeah, I don’t know if it’s, I’d have to look to see if, it might be in the airlines policies, but yeah, you just need to have a lock in every locking point. So the pistol cases I have, there’s two. My rifle cases might have four or six of them. So you just need locks for all of them. I was talking with Tom Gresham from Gun Talk and NRA meetings and he told me about a lock, I forget the name of them, but he’s like, they’re really hard to like break. So if TSA wanted to try to like break it or cut it off, they’re really hard to do that. I’m like, oh, let me look into those. But they’re like $120 a lock. It’s like, all right, I’m probably gonna stick with my regular locks for now. So.
Kent Brown (43:41)
Yeah,
but for a reason, there’s a lot of stuff out there, right? You can get a reasonably priced case. You can get reasonably priced locks that fit the specification. It doesn’t have to be a financially overwhelming, you know, affair to travel with your firearm. And I want to wrap up in a minute, but any last stuff, Luke, if you just were giving people, you know, sort of the top couple of things to think about maybe for their first time traveling by air with a firearm.
Luke McCoy (44:11)
I think so knowing the policies and knowing how it’s gonna go is important. I always start with, when I get called up, I always say, I’m declaring firearms. Like that’s the first thing I always say. So I don’t walk up and say, I’ve got guns or something. I just say, I’m declaring firearms. And that to me tells them, I know what I’m talking about. I’m following the policies and it hopefully makes things go a little smoother. Like, you’ve done this before kind when they see that the FedEx slip, they know that I’ve done this before and it makes them at ease a little bit. And just trying to, like I said, go with the flow without being too argumentative or anything like that. It usually goes smoothly and you can see that, like I said, 55 videos, I think only one or two, there’s been a couple issues. So most of the time it goes smooth. They know their policies and you’re on your way.
Kent Brown (45:04)
You know, so I fly a lot, but I don’t fly with firearms. And this is just a little bit of a smaller detail. So when you’re gonna, you’re bringing your suitcase and it’s got the firearm case inside and you going straight to the counter where it’s more of the, what I’ll call the full service check-in or do you go to some of those where you self-serve, get your own luggage tag and put that on first and you’re doing a drop-off? Can you bring me the way?
Luke McCoy (45:29)
Depends. ⁓ so lately I’ve been just going to the help desk at Southwest before tagging. Sometimes I have tagged it at the kiosk and then waited. so in New, in New Orleans, I’ve done the bag tag and then waited at the bag drop off. Totally fine. I did that in Houston coming back. She’s like, no, you need to go to the help desk, but then continued to check me in. So Next time I’m in Houston, I’ll go to the help desk. So again, so if you go walk up and they’re like, no, you need to be over there. Just, okay. Go to the other line. That’s why I get there. I get there two hours from when I’m boarding. I also have TSA pre and clear, so that speeds security up, but that’s my window. Like two hours, it’s plenty of time to get there, check the bags. If there’s any issues, I can still get through and get to my flight on time.
Kent Brown (46:25)
Think that’s really great advice. And I’m sure there’s people watching this today who probably cringe at thought of getting there two hours early. But if you’re traveling with firearm, it’s different, right? You’re not going on vacation or a last minute meeting where you can swing in there, even in Oklahoma City, which the security is very simple. You need that extra time built in, to your point. They may ask you to wait 15 minutes before you go through security. And of course, you don’t want to check them back.
Luke McCoy (46:50)
Right. Or they might ask for your keys and you’re have to go all the way back and give them the keys and go wait for them to go through your guns and then come and give you keys and then you have to go back. There’s like, so just give yourself enough time. So you’re not stressing yourself out and giving yourself anxiety over it. Like.
Kent Brown (47:07)
Hopefully the advice people are getting and your experience today is reducing some of the anxiety. The last thing I wanted to talk about is, and you can answer it, but why are you taking your firearms? You want those with you for some of those for self-defense in the location that you’re going to? Because that’s what I’m sure some of our members are thinking, I’m going to wherever, Missouri for a week for business.
I’m obviously not gonna buy a firearm when I get there, but maybe it’s a constitutional carry state and they’re like, I know I can carry and I want one with me, which is a totally valid reason to take it. So do you do that sometimes? Obviously you’re doing shooting and videos and content and all kinds of things, but when you get to some of these other destinations, are you caring for self-defense?
Luke McCoy (47:33)
Yes, so I’m usually carrying with my carry gun at the time. So I just switched to carrying an Echelon. I don’t have one in both locations. So I’m carrying with my carry gun. I started doing USPSA last year. So I’m usually carrying my competition gun. So I’m dry firing with that a lot. And then, you know, I’m doing USA Carry to where I’m reviewing guns and optics and this and that. So I’m flying with those so I can continue to review the review process.
Yeah, I get that question a lot. Well, why are you even carrying? Why are you even flying with guns? What’s your job? I’m like, well, it’s none of your, well, none of your business, but this is my job. But yeah, when I went to Denver or not Denver, when I went to Salt Lake City and from Delta, I snipped my zip ties and I went into the bathroom and that’s something you need to make sure is legal as well. for example, in Las Vegas airport, you can open carry, but you can’t conceal carry even if you have a permit anywhere in the airport. So if you’re to fly into Las Vegas, get your gun, go to the bathroom, load up, you’d be breaking the law. If you fly in New Orleans, you can carry concealed up to the TSA security checkpoints. So doing that same thing in New Orleans is fine. So again, you just have to know the laws in each state and specifically, if you wanna carry right when you get to the airport, you need to find out if that’s legal or not or do you have to get out of the airport until you get to your hotel room or so? Know the laws and know the policies.
Kent Brown (49:23)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that’s really important. you know, one of the reasons we have this podcast today, of course, is to just, you know, we have members who will travel with their firearm for whatever reason. But, you know, all when you have a CCW Safe plan, you know, as a membership here, we cover you in 47 states. That’s in all of our plans. So they don’t have to worry about, of course, New York, New Jersey and Washington state we don’t cover, but all the other 47 states we do. So if you’re traveling and you want it with you for self-defense, hopefully the video today will help you get comfortable with getting it there. And then of course you want to research and understand the laws of where you’re at to make sure you know if you can carry and what the rules are for each specific situation, like the airport, like other public places, but that we’re with you there. if you…
live in Louisiana like Luke and Luke is a member of CCW Safe and got the bid. He gets in into an incident in Salt Lake City. He’s still calling the same hotline and we have the same team that’s going to help them out. Right. So members rest assured, you know, there’s some people in the industry where you have to pay extra to get multi-state coverage. And we just don’t do that. And so, so we want all the folks watching today to know that.
We have your back wherever you go in those 47 states. And so, you know, make sure that you’re following the local laws and that you’re using good principles and defending yourself and, you know, consume other content about carrying and de-escalation and all these tactics that can make you safer. But we know…
as well as anybody, know, a lot of these situations get thrust upon you. You don’t choose them and you don’t always have all the options to withdraw or even deescalate in some circumstances, even though we want you to try, but they do happen fast and you’re in a strange surroundings and you know, so I think that sort of being in an unfamiliar place,
Luke McCoy (51:14)
Things happen quick.
Kent Brown (51:24)
increases the anxiety, you know, and thinking about what your options are and what to do. You know, just also know you don’t have to have the anxiety of it. Do I still have this same team of experts over there at CCW? Say if we were going to help, we are going to help and we hope that you never have an incident. We hope that you navigate the airport beautifully and that there’s no excess friction that goes on maybe because you’ve watched this video today and it inspires you to you know check your airline regulation before you go if you’re flying united or some other airline that you just check that out before you go and give yourself plenty of time. Have the right equipment to do it. know, don’t take a soft case. Don’t go over there with, you know, four lock points and you only have one lock and you’re trying to talk them into that’s okay. That’s probably not going to be okay. And just, you know, follow the rules and I think you’ll have a very successful trip. And, you know, we hope that everyone’s safe and but if you need us, we’re here for you.
So Luke, anything last you want to add? Go ahead.
Luke McCoy (52:27)
Yeah, oh, no, go ahead. No, was just gonna say, like, if anybody’s you know, anxious about flying with guns or you’re gonna do it soon, go watch the series and see how many times it’s a painless process. Like, it’s very easy to do. Like I said, I’ve got 55 episodes. I upload a new one every Tuesday. It’s wherever you wanna watch it, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, I just upload it everywhere, so.
Kent Brown (52:49)
Good. And I would encourage people to watch them. You know, for me, I just, there is even a slight entertainment value to watching it because, you know, you’re seeing somebody navigate it, it hopefully…
Luke McCoy (52:55)
Hopefully that helps some people.
Kent Brown (53:10)
It will reduce any anxiety that people have. And I there’s people watching this today who are like, I know how to do this. Like this does not worry me. But there are people there who it’s going to be their first time at some point, just like it’s their first time shooting a firearm, just like it’s their first time carrying the firearm, just, you know, all these first time things, it can be a little bit stressful. And so we hope everybody will.
Luke McCoy (53:30)
I had my first time carrying on a college campus last week when I was in Salt Lake City. I had to look it up. I thought I had to bring my gun home because we were going straight to the college instead of going home first. But I’m like, wait, hold on, let me look it up. I’m like, oh, I can carry on campus, so we’re good. I was a little anxious walking around the campus carry because that was my first time, but it was legal, so.
Kent Brown (53:47)
Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. And look, it does require research. If you’re not in your home environment, like, know, we’re here in Oklahoma City. I mean, not to oversimplify it, but you pretty much do whatever, you know, reasonable thing you can want to do around town without worrying about it. Now, you know, I would not recommend walking into the police department or a courthouse or things like that. Right. Of course. But in your day to day life of shopping and working and, you know,
Luke McCoy (53:58)
Mm-hmm.
Kent Brown (54:20)
being social you can carry here and it’s not particularly stressful that you have to worry about it and we have we have very very favorable laws in Oklahoma but California not so much all right not so much at all I mean the first thing you got to check is reciprocity on your permit if you don’t have a permit don’t even take it don’t even go there so so
Luke McCoy (54:31)
Not so much. I don’t think they recognize anyone’s permit to be honest when I flew there for a vacation. I just I didn’t bring my gun I just shipped some palm pepper spray one day delivery from Amazon to have some kind of defensive tool on me and that worked
Kent Brown (54:54)
That you can get a California permit but not be a resident there. But you have to go through the process. And for people who are watching, right, if you live in Utah, you can get a California permit. And actually some of that you can get online now and their curriculums are approved to be taught in other states.
So, you know, make sure you’re getting a California approved curriculum to CRPA. We’re now returning this into a California advertisement. CRPA has a new approved California curriculum that’s taking off. So there’s a lot of good things if you’re going to go to California and the CRPA website has a lot of resources as well. So, so please just kind of keep up with where you’re going and be informed and be safe. That’s all we want for our folks. appreciate Luke’s time today and we encourage people to go watch his videos. Of course he has a lot of content on the site which is fabulous. I also suggest you follow him on social media. I follow his Instagram account and he’s posting real life articles about people and self-defense incidents all over the country all the time. We post some of that stuff as well but it’s a good follow and if you’re someone who’s interested in carrying and you’re interested in self-defense and you’re interested in the tools of self-defense, whether it’s firearms or accessories, Luke is a great place to come and see at usacarry.com. So Luke, thank you for the time. Good to see you as always. yeah, our pleasure. We’ll have you back sometime soon. Thanks everybody. And we’ll see you on the next podcast.
Luke McCoy (56:19)
Good to see you. Thanks for having me on.