Wait. The TSA Intercepts How Many Guns Per Day in Airports?
Ideally we'd like to spend this post criticizing TSA for various inadequacies implicit and explicit. There's something not quite right about the agency's new "we'll retest for radiation levels but not really" announcement on full-body scanners, especially given its extensive and well-documented past dissembling on the issue. There are still issues to discuss from last year about the contradictions in pushing for private TSA baggage screeners. We'd like to know why it was necessary to tase a traveler to the point of hospitalization at the Sacramento International Airport. Someone should ask what steps are being taken to prevent a repeat of the $40,000-stealing TSA agent. And isn't there something wrong with airport security when $400,000 worth of coins are getting left at security every year by flustered travelers?
But we can't talk about any of that, because people won't stop trying to bring weapons on airplanes. Especially guns. Lots and lots of guns. So instead of this post being about the many ways TSA makes traveling worse, it's about one very specific way that travelers make traveling worse.
Within the last few weeks a Richmond man tried to smuggle a loaded revolver through security at Richmond International Airport. He was caught. A college student from China tried to get a combination stun gun and flashlight onto a plane at JFK. She was caught. We can only imagine how many other travelers were delayed while airport security dealt with just those two.
And it turns out that the problem goes well beyond those two. Last year TSA intercepted four guns per day in American airports. There was a period where they caught 14 loaded and 5 unloaded handguns in a single week. It's tough to criticize TSA agents when that's happening.
Stop it.
[Photo: Inha Leex Hale / Flickr]
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