“Each year, thousands of air travelers, airport workers and TSA officers face unnecessary danger because of gun owners who attempt to bring firearms through carry-on luggage checkpoints,” [Pennsylvania State Rep. Dan] Frankel said in a statement. “The statistics are alarming – last year, TSA seized about 6,500 guns, and nearly 90% of them were loaded. The owners’ response in 100% of the cases was ‘I forgot.’”
This year, the TSA says it is on track to set a record for the most guns stopped at checkpoints in a single year. The current record set last year was 6,542. At Harrisburg International Airport, TSA has found eight guns as of Christmas Day, just two shy of the highest number stopped since at least 2017.
TSA agents at PIttsburgh International Airport caught 44 guns at the airport’s checkpoint as of Christmas Day, nine more than the previous record of 35 firearms caught in 2019. Philadelphia International Airport also is seeing a record high number of firearms in carry-on baggage with 45 incidents as of mid-December, according to a report on 6ABC.
“It’s kind of like an epidemic of stupidity at best and who knows, at worst,” Frankel told PennLive. “If we revoke license to carry permits for people because they are shoplifting or because of a marijuana possession or something like that, this certainly raises to a more dangerous violation than those kinds of incidents. Taking away someone’s permit relates directly to the infraction. It makes a lot of sense.”
— Jan Murphy in Packing Heat in a Pa. Airport Could Cost Gun Owners Their Concealed Carry Permits Under Proposed Law