Kuwaiti Man Packs 600 Rounds of Ammo for His Flight Home

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TSA agents bust passengers trying to smuggle all kinds of oddball things: turtles, grenades, meat cleavers—even human skull fragments.

At JFK airport last week, agents stopped a Kuwaiti hunting enthusiast carrying enough ammo to take down every Sumatran tiger left on the planet.

Meshari Alawadi, 27, was pulled aside as he tried to hop a flight to Washington, D.C.—and ultimately return to Kuwait—when agents discovered 570 rounds of ammo and extended magazine clips in his checked luggage, according to officials and court papers.

When asked what all the firepower was for, Alawadi said he enjoyed shooting guns for sport. “The investigation determined that [Alawadi] was on honeymoon. He was taking ammunition back to Kuwait because he was a small-game hunter,” according to the documents.

Police car parked outside of JFK airport. 

REUTERS/JESSICA RINALDI

His bags had set off alarms during a routine X-ray test that looks for guns. After the find, members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force and FBI rushed to United Airlines wing at JFK to interview Alawadi, and eventually determined that he wasn’t a terrorist threat.

The TSA said that despite stopping Alawadi, its primary concern is explosives, not guns, ammo or even drugs.

During his interview, Alawadi told agents he and his new bride had visited Tampa Bay, Florida, before going to California, where he bought the bullets “legally.” It’s unclear how Alawadi managed get the ammunition to New York.

U.S. law prohibits foreigners from buying guns or ammo and taking them back to their home countries. But gun checks at some stores are lax, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The FAA, meanwhile, doesn’t appear to place any limits on the amount of ammo that someone can bring onto a plane in their checked bags.

While the feds determined Alawadi wasn’t a national-security threat he did appear before a judge in Queens Criminal Court and pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of ammunition, a misdemeanor, and was allowed to leave.

A representative at the Kuwait Embassy in Washington, D.C., declined to comment about Alawadi’s case.