TSA officers detected this loaded handgun at the Elmira Corning Regional Airport checkpoint on Dec. 21. (TSA photo)
ELMIRA, N.Y. – An Ontario County, N.Y., man was prevented from carrying his 9 mm handgun onto his flight when Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers detected the gun in his carry-on bag at Elmira Corning Regional Airport on Tuesday, Dec. 21. The gun was loaded with six bullets.
When the TSA officers spotted the gun in the man’s carry-on bag, they alerted the airport police, who arrived at the checkpoint and confiscated the gun. The man, a resident of Geneva, N.Y., now faces a stiff federal financial penalty for bringing the weapon to the airport checkpoint.
“I would like to commend the actions of the officers assigned to Elmira for detecting this loaded gun in the carry-on luggage,” said Bart R. Johnson, Federal Security Director for Upstate New York. “It is the busy holiday season and carrying a loaded gun with you to the airport is an accident waiting to happen. If you own a firearm, you need to take a little extra time when packing your items to bring to the airport. Under no circumstances should someone be carrying a gun at a security checkpoint.”
Passengers are permitted to travel with firearms in checked baggage if they are properly packaged and declared at their airline ticket counter. Firearms must be unloaded, packed in a hard-sided locked case, and packed separately from ammunition. Then the locked case should be taken to the airline check-in counter to be declared. TSA has details on how to properly travel with a firearm posted on its website.
Bringing a gun to an airport checkpoint carries a federal civil penalty because TSA reserves the right to issue a civil penalty to travelers who have guns and gun parts with them at a checkpoint. Civil penalties for bringing a handgun into a checkpoint can stretch into thousands of dollars, depending on mitigating circumstances. This applies to travelers with or without concealed gun carry permits because even though an individual may have a concealed carry permit, it does not allow for a firearm to be carried onto an airplane. The complete list of civil penalties is posted online. Additionally, if a traveler with a gun is a member of TSA PreCheck®, that individual will lose their TSA PreCheck privileges.
Nationwide, TSA officers detected 3,257 firearms on passengers or their carry-on bags at checkpoints last year, although the total number of passengers screened at airport checkpoints across the country fell by 500 million compared to 2019 due to the pandemic. The result was that twice as many firearms per million passengers screened were detected at checkpoints in 2020 compared to 2019. In 2020, TSA caught approximately 10 firearms per million passengers as compared to about five firearms per million passengers in 2019. Of the guns caught by TSA in 2020, about 83 percent were loaded.