As usual, U.S. Customs Service inspectors give departing travelers' bags a close scrutiny Friday afternoon at Cyril E. King Airport on St. Thomas. At the same time, a passenger coming into St. Thomas is able to grab her bags off the conveyor belt without anyone asking to see what she has brought into the territory.

When Bruce Barton flew home to the Virgin Islands from New York, his luggage didn't. It took another day for the luggage, mistakenly sent to Puerto Rico, to get to St. Croix. And it took nearly two more days for Barton to find a ride back to the airport from his home in Estate Strawberry to pick it up.

What Barton didn't know as he pulled up to the airport was that Pan American Airways officials, worried because the luggage was standing unattended for so long, had turned it over to the U.S. Customs Service.

Customs agents, with airline employees looking on, opened Barton's suitcase and searched it. They found the clothing and toiletries -- and a gun.

Customs agents allowed Barton to pick up the luggage. When agents asked him if he had anything to declare, specifically a weapon, he said no.

They let him take his suitcase and go. Then they checked with police and found that Barton didn't have a gun license. He also hadn't turned the gun in within 24 hours of arriving in the territory -- as required by V.I. law.

Law officers got a search warrant for his house in Strawberry. There they found the gun -- a .38-caliber police special -- hidden in the folds of an unopened umbrella. Barton admitted bringing in the gun and pleaded guilty to gun possession charges.

Even though law officers feel certain that scores, and possibly hundreds, of guns come into the territory in personal luggage from the mainland each year, Barton's arrest was a fluke.

Most people bringing in weapons pass right through the airport undetected.

In fact, law officials say, you are far more likely to be struck by lightning at least once in your lifetime than to be searched for weapons when you come to the Virgin Islands from the U.S. mainland.

It's not that Customs never checks luggage. It does -- but the luggage heading the other way.

Customs says the reason for this is a tax agreement that allows the Virgin Islands to keep the duties on goods going to the mainland. Customs checks the luggage and packages to determine how much duty it can collect.

On the other hand, no law or agreement allows Customs to collect duty on personal items coming into the territory. Flights between the mainland and the territory are treated the same as flights between two states. It would literally take an act of Congress to allow inspection at entry points from the mainland into the Virgin Islands.

But territorial Police Chief Delroy Richards believes the flow of guns into the territory has reached such dire proportions that the United States should do whatever is needed to shut down the gun trade.

"Unless we have complete inspections at our points of entry," Richards says, "we can never expect to stop illegal weapons from coming in."