Last minute tag-in....
I flew from Tucson to Salt Lake via Denver, just before Christmas. I had been up for about 48 hours prior to the trip, finishing some stuff at work so I could take the time off. When I checked in at Tucson (Southwest Air) I was so tired, I actually forgot to declare the Hi-Point .45 in my suticase. Oops.
Didn't even think about it until I was handing the terminal crew my boarding pass, and decided if I'd gotten that far, I'd just wait and see what happened.
Stopped in Denver for two hours, had lunch and a beer, got to Salt Lake. Did my normal post-luggage-claim stop in the toilet stall to re-arm, and went out to the road to wait for my father to pick me up. No problems.
So much for "security theater".