“The Transportation Security Administration on its blog publishes a weekly tally of weapons found,” latimes.com reports. “As of Christmas Eve, 3,888 firearms had been discovered on passengers at U.S. airport checkpoints for the year.” If so, that’ll be up nearly 15 percent over 2016. Despite the Times’ shock horror, and the obvious indication of ongoing gun owner irresponsibility, I take it as a good sign . . .
I highly doubt that the average intelligence of the average American has increased — I mean decreased — in the last 12 months. I’m equally skeptical that the TSA’s blue-shirted buffoons have become better at intercepting firearms at their “show us your papers” chokepoints. And airline passenger traffic isn’t up significantly this year.
So the double-digit rise in confiscations must reflect the increasing number of [otherwise] law-abiding Americans packing heat.
Yay! But as heartening as this stat is, it represents a slackening of the three-year pace . “At the end of 2016, the TSA reported it has taken 3,391 firearms from passengers, a 28% increase from the previous year,” the Times reports.
While we’re doing the math thing, U.S. airports accommodated some 832 million “enplanements” in 2016. Which means that one out of every 245,355.352 airline passengers experience the thrill of talking TSA agents about firearms and their defective memory. Don’t be that guy!