Errant bottles of mouthwash are not allowed. Fingernail clippers are right out. The most obvious hidden weapon since the days of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. or any Zatoichi-esque flick, including Rutger Hauer’s BLIND FURY, and airport security screeners are shocked by their existence. What’s even more unbelievable is that fact they think the elderly passengers are “just as surprised” their seemingly innocent walking aids hide sharpened righteous justice underneath.

Since 2002, TSA screeners have found more than 200 canes concealing either swords or knives. Many of these incidents involve elderly travelers who are just as surprised as the security screeners to find sabers hidden inside canes they may have inherited, found at antique shops, or received from charities. In September alone, four such incidents occurred according to documents provided by the TSA.

[…]

During the Middle Ages, members of the nobility carried walking sticks with blades on pilgrimages. And at the peak of cane popularity, in the 19th century, men would have an array of canes including so-called defense canes. Romantic poet Lord Byron wrote about carrying one in an 1816 diary entry describing a mountain hike. “Guide wanted to carry my cane; I was going to give it to him when I recollected that it was a swordstick and I thought the lightning might be attracted toward him; kept it myself.”

Elsewere on Groonk.net:

• Stick Fighting
• Kicking a Multitude of Butt with a Walking-Stick
  
• Kicking Butt with a Walking-Stick (or Umbrella)

(via Stephen Colbert, gawker, WSJ)