TSA Sets New Mark for Guns Seized at U.S. Airports

The Transportation Security Administration passed a sobering milestone last year.

For the first time in the agency’s 20-year history, it seized more than 6,000 firearms in a year from passengers at U.S. airport security checkpoints—6,542, to be exact. That’s a 9.5 percent increase from the 5,972 seized in 2021.

Significantly, the number of weapons seized by TSA has risen dramatically since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as passenger traffic continues to fall short of the record number of travelers set in 2019. That year, TSA officers caught 4,432 guns.

Perhaps more worrisome, about 88 percent of the weapons seized in 2022 were loaded, according to the agency. That’s up from 86 percent in 2021 and 83 percent in 2020.

“The most common excuse from people is they forgot they had the firearm with them,” said TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein at a December press conference held at Pittsburgh International Airport. “That excuse doesn’t fly with us.”

Fortunately, PIT bucked the national trend; officers here stopped 26 guns in 2022, down from 32 the year before. However, the airports in Harrisburg and Philadelphia both set records for nu