9mm Handgun Confiscated From VA Man At Reagan National Airport

ARLINGTON, VA — A Centreville man was stopped at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday when he tried to bring a loaded handgun onto his flight, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

TSA officers at the airport spotted the gun in the man's carry-on bag as it went through an airport X-ray machine. The 9mm handgun was loaded with five bullets, according to the TSA.

When the gun was found, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority police were alerted. The police confiscated the gun and issued a citation to the Centreville man.

“We have seen more guns caught at our checkpoints so far this year than the total number we stopped in 2019 and 2020 combined,” Scott Johnson, TSA federal security director for Reagan National Airport, said in a statement Thursday.

Twenty-eight guns have been caught at Reagan National Airport so far in 2021, compared to 10 guns detected at the airport in 2020 and 14 in 2019.

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. The locked case must be taken to the airline check-in counter to be declared.

Bringing a gun to an airport checkpoint carries a federal civil penalty that can total thousands of dollars.

Nationwide, TSA officers detected 3,257 firearms on passengers or in their carry-on bags at checkpoints in 2020.

The total number of passengers screened at airport checkpoints across the country fell by 500 million in 2020 compared to 2019 due to the pandemic, according to the TSA. But twice as many firearms per million passengers screened were detected at checkpoints in 2020 compared to 2019, the agency said.

In 2020, TSA caught about 10 firearms per million passengers, compared to about five firearms per million passengers in 2019. Of the guns caught by TSA in 2020, about 83 percent were loaded.

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