TSA: Guns at checkpoints down
U.S. airports remain on pace for record year
Travelers in the United States are on track to set a record with the number of guns they’ve brought to airport checkpoints this year, though the number at Pittsburgh International is down a tick from where it was at this time last year, Transportation Security Administration officials said Wednesday.
Across the country’s 430 airports last year, TSA agents stopped 5,972 guns in carry-on
bags. Around 87% were loaded. TSA officials expect that number will top 6,000 this year — a record in the agency’s two decades of existence.
“Keep in mind,” said TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein at Pittsburgh International, “that TSA has been in existence for 21 years, but it’s not like this is anything new. You weren’t allowed to carry a firearm (on a plane) before TSA existed, so this law has been in effect for decades.”
Most people tell TSA agents and Allegheny County police officers they forgot the gun was in their bag.
“That’s pretty unbelievable,” Ms. Farbstein said. “Responsible gun owners should know where their guns are at all times, and here we have people telling us they don’t even know where their gun is.
“I guess it’s a good thing it wasn’t an emergency — they wouldn’t have known where it was.”
Over the years, guns have been “forgotten” in purses, backpacks and, in one case at Arnold Palmer Regional in Latrobe, a baby stroller. Once late last year, a man was caught with a gun in an antique clutch purse. He said the purse was from a deceased relative’s home and claimed he didn’t know the gun was inside.
In mid-October, the airport saw a stretch of five
days in which four travelers were stopped with guns in four separate incidents.
Firearm stops at Pittsburgh International Airport had been on a slow and slight rise in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic: 32 in 2017, 34 in 2108 and 35 in 2019. That number dropped to 21 amid the height of the pandemic in 2020, but officials have previously noted that the rate of passengers carrying firearms increased relative to the dramatic drop in air travel.
Last year, though travel levels were not yet back to pre-pandemic loads, TSA agents stopped 32 guns at Pittsburgh checkpoints.
The issue got so bad last year the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Pennsylvania’s Western District announced that his office would begin requesting county sheriffs rescind concealed carry permits for travelers caught with guns at checkpoints.
“In order to send the message that airport security checkpoints and guns don’t mix, we need a deterrent strategy,” said Steve Kaufman, who at the time was the acting U.S. attorney for the district.
Two days later a Beaver Falls man was arrested when officials found a loaded .357-caliber handgun in his carry-on bag. The man was arrested after he told officers the gun was his father’s and he’d forgotten to take it out of the bag.
The strategy was also meant to give law enforcement officers more teeth when it came to criminal charges in such instances. The TSA can levy civil penalties — from $3,000 up to $13,000 — but those can take years to work their way through the bureaucracy of federal government.
“We’re hoping that the word has gotten out and that has made an impact,” Ms. Farbstein said.
There is a way — the only way — to bring one’s properly licensed firearm during air travel. The guns must be put, unloaded, in a hard-sided case that has a lock. Any ammunition should also go in the case in its original packaging. The gun is checked like any other checked baggage, though it does require a small bit of paperwork — about the size of a standard notecard.