Atlanta airport leads nation in found firearms
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Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport isn't only the world's busiest. It's also the most strapped.
Driving the news: The undisputed heavyweight champion of firearms found in travelers' carry-on baggage has done it again, according to the Transportation Security Administration's annual review.
Details: TSA agents found 451 handguns at Atlanta airport security checkpoints in 2023, a small jump compared with the 448 detected in 2022.
- It's below, however, the high of 507 firearms in 2021, when COVID-19 air travel restrictions started to ease.
Zoom out: Statewide, agents found a firearm for every 61,646 passengers — more than double the national rate.
What happens: When a TSA agent detects a firearm, they immediately contact the airport law enforcement agency — in this case the Atlanta Police Department — to remove the weapon and contact the traveler.
- What happens to the firearm — and the traveler — is at the discretion of the airport law enforcement agency, TSA says. People can face criminal and civil penalties, plus the loss of TSA PreCheck eligibility.
Yes, but: Travelers caught by a TSA agent with a prohibited object like a hatchet, saw blade or novelty bat (really) have three options: take the items back to their cars, check them in a bag or surrender the objects and pick them up later.
- The objects are tossed in a locker. When the locker fills up, a third-party contractor hauls off the items to be sold at auction or elsewhere.
Fun fact: An Alabama store called Unclaimed Baggage contracts with airliners and resells the wild variety of items travelers abandon or lose.
Thomas' thought bubble: I'm not surprised that an airport offering roughly 2,500 flights a day in Georgia, where almost half the population owns a gun, according to CBS News, sees so many firearms moving through it.
- The bigger question is why we keep putting guns in the carry-ons and not the checked bags.