Tennessee Man With Handgun Stopped By TSA At Reagan National Airport

ARLINGTON, VA — A Tennessee man was prevented from bringing a .40 caliber gun and two loaded gun magazines with 19 bullets packed alongside the weapon at a flight on Saturday at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

The firearm was caught by TSA officers as the man entered the security checkpoint. The X-ray unit alerted officers about the man’s carry-on bag, which was searched and the firearm removed by a Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Police officer, who confiscated the gun and cited the man on a weapons charge.

This is the 11th gun to be confiscated at security checkpoints at Reagan National Airport in 2023. TSA officers confiscated 29 guns at the airport in 2022, and a record 30 were confiscated in 2021, according to the TSA.

“It is unfortunate that we continue to see travelers carrying their firearms and ammunition to the security checkpoint here at Reagan National Airport and airports across the country,” said John Busch, TSA’s federal security director at the airport.

“It has been decades — long before TSA existed — that a regulation has been in place that prohibits passengers from possessing firearms during a flight,” he said.

In addition to the citation by airport police, the Tennessee man now faces a financial civil penalty. Civil penalties for carrying a weapon can reach a maximum of $15,000.

Passengers are permitted to travel with firearms only in checked baggage if they are unloaded and packed in a hard-sided locked case. The locked case should then be taken to the airline check-in counter to be declared.

Last year, 6,542 firearms were caught at 262 out of 430 airport security checkpoints nationwide. Eighty-eight percent of those guns were loaded, TSA said.

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