At today’s marathon, the finish line was at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. As part of being on base, all bags were subject to search and weapons were not allowed. My dad forgot that he had his Swiss Army Knife in his pocket and had to go back to his car to drop it off; that’s fine, but the policy of “weapons” is not evenly applied. At the start line, runners could check gear in “gear check” bags; I had zip tied my bag closed and all bags were transported on UPS trucks to MCRD. While the bags were clear, it is quite easy to conceal stuff in the bags and they were never searched. So after I got my bag, I couldn’t open it and asked a vendor if he had a pair of scissors. He gladly said yes and cut the zip tie off my bag. Are scissors not a weapon? Furthermore, how many of the vendors had box cutters to open up their boxes? Most likely all of them.
It’s a good thing that nothing really exciting happens at MCRD. At friend of ours is a civilian contractor at MCRD and he said that they don’t have weapons or anything interesting on the base, except for the weapons that the military police carry (some had pistols, others had some type of automatic rifles).