More air travelers with guns
Record number seized at airports by TSA in May
WASHINGTON – Several times every day, at airports across the country, passengers are trying to walk through security with loaded guns in their carry-on bags, purses or pockets, even in a boot. And, more than a decade after 9/11 raised consciousness about airline security, it’s happening a lot more often.
In the first six months of this year, Transportation Security Administration screeners found 894 guns on passengers or in their carry-on bags, a 30 percent increase over the same period last year. The TSA set a record in May for the most guns seized in one week – 65 in all, 45 of them loaded and 15 with bullets in the chamber and ready to be fired. That was 30 percent more than the previous record of 50 guns, set just two weeks earlier.
Last year TSA found 1,549 firearms on passengers attempting to go through screening, up 17 percent from the year before. Eighty-five percent of the guns intercepted last year were loaded.
In response to a request from the Associated Press, the agency provided figures on the number of firearm incidents in 2011 and 2012 for all U.S. airports, as well as the number of passengers screened at each airport. The AP analyzed the data, as well as weekly blog reports from the agency on intercepted guns from this year and last year.
TSA didn’t keep statistics on guns intercepted before 2011, but officials have noticed an upward trend in recent years, spokesman David Castelveter said.
Some of the details make officials shake their heads.
As one passenger took off his jacket to go through screening in Sacramento, Calif., last year, TSA officers noticed he was wearing a shoulder holster, and in it was a loaded 9-mm pistol. The same passenger was found to have three more loaded pistols, 192 rounds of ammunition, two magazines and three knives.
Screeners elsewhere found a .45-caliber pistol and magazine hidden inside a cassette deck. Another .45-caliber pistol loaded with seven rounds, including a round in the chamber, was hidden under the lining of a carry-on bag in Charlotte, N.C. A passenger in Allentown, Pa., was carrying a pistol designed to look like a writing pen. At first the passenger said it was just a pen, but later acknowledged it was a gun, according to TSA.
A passenger in March at Bradley Hartford International Airport in Connecticut had a loaded .38-caliber pistol containing eight rounds strapped to his lower left leg. At Salt Lake City International Airport, a gun was found inside a passenger’s boot strapped to a prosthetic leg.
TSA doesn’t believe these gun-toting passengers are terrorists, but the agency can’t explain why so many passengers try to board planes with guns, either, Castelveter said. The most common excuse offered by passengers is “I forgot it was there.”
“We don’t analyze the behavioral traits of people who carry weapons. We’re looking for terrorists,” he said. “But sometimes you have to scratch your head and say, ‘Why?’ ”
Many passengers found to have guns by screeners are arrested, but not all. It depends on the gun laws where the airport is located. If the state or jurisdiction where the airport is located has tolerant gun laws, TSA screeners will frequently hand the gun back to the passenger and recommend locking it in a car or finding some other safe place for it. The government doesn’t track what happens to the people who are arrested.