I’ve made it through airport scanners with knives and multi tools, as well as live rounds, all by accident. I didn’t even know until I was at my destination.
Other times I get my bag searched because they saw an empty casing or an unloaded bullet, buried at the bottom of my bag.
Once at Fairbanks International I was headed to Barrow with some research equipment in checked baggage. Pipes attached to electronic temperature readers, data loggers, etc. It honestly looked like pipe bombs on the scanner. TSA called for me, brought my bag over, opened it, shook his head and then put them back in my bag and I was on my way.
There’s a lot of subjectivity with TSA workers. I’d imagine a lot worse than a live round sometimes gets through.
