Courtesy TSA

On its blog each week, the TSA posts a round-up of some of the unusual and prohibited items the agency’s officers finds in carry-on bags and checked luggage at airports.

The list usually includes a wide array of guns, stuns guns, ammunition, potentially explosive items and many items that are safe – but which look dangerous, such as perfume bottles shaped like grenades.

The list-within-a-list that always grabs my attention is the number of guns and firearms found in carry-on bags at airports.

The rules are very clear on this: no guns on airplanes.  Yet each week travelers show up at security checkpoints packing guns. And, often they are loaded (The guns, not the people; though sometimes, probably both.)

The TSA says most of the people caught with guns in carry-on bags are not terrorists – ‘merely’ people who forgot they had a gun in their bag.  But, to me,  that’s still alarming.

Here’s this week’s tally: of the 57 firearms found at airports, 47 were loaded and 14 had rounds chambered.

That’s not quite the record number of  firearms – 65 – reported a few weeks back.  But it’s darn close. And summer has just started…

Chart courtesy TSA

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