With more Americans taking to the skies this summer, a few too many are showing up with guns that weren’t packed correctly.
Yet another was confiscated at a Reagan National Airport checkpoint Sunday, according to the Transportation Security Administration. That loaded .38-caliber handgun was the 14th found there this year — already tying the total from 2019. Just days earlier on Thursday, agents also confiscated a loaded .40-caliber gun at a checkpoint.
Their owners — a Georgia man and a Maryland man, respectively — each face federal fines in the thousands.
“When you take in to account the fact that checkpoint volume at Reagan National Airport is still below pre-pandemic levels, seeing an increase in the number of travelers who are bringing their guns to our checkpoints is an alarming trend,” said Scott Johnson, the TSA’s federal security director at Reagan National, in a statement.
TSA reminds all gun owners that one can travel with their gun, as long as it’s packed in a hard-sided, locked case and packed separately from ammunition — then checked and declared.
It also reminds such travelers to check with their airline, where more rules might apply, and with the local/state laws in their destination.
