Everyone needs a break or an actual vacation in the summer time.
Even Bob Burns, the TSA employee who puts together the weekly round-up on the TSA blog of all the firearms, stun guns, knives and miscellaneous other items on the prohibited items list that are discovered on passengers and in their carry-on at airport security checkpoints.
I don’t know for sure if Blogger Bob was at the beach last week, but I do know that last week there was no Week in Review on the TSA blog.
And I missed it. The blog is a bit terrifying because so many people either try to sneak loaded guns and other pretty dangerous items onto airplanes or they carry those things around with them everyday and just forget that they have those things with them. I’m not sure what’s worse.
The report is back now with two week’s worth of ‘findings,’ including 77 firearms, of which 69 were loaded and 21 had rounds chambered.
Courtesy TSA
Also found: 27 stun guns, a cane sword, knives, brass knuckles and a bunch of cocaine hidden inside candles.
You can see all the details – and some photos – on the TSA Blog
As more and more groups come out in opposition to the TSA’s impending rule changes about allowing small knives and some other previously prohibited items back onto planes as carry-ons, TSA chief John Pistole said the agency is sticking to its guns about the change in its ruling about knives.
From the TSA Blog – just one of the 20 loaded guns found at airport checkpoints this week.
In the always entertaining – and often shocking – TSA Week in Review report, TSA blogger Bob Burns reports that this week 21 guns were found at airport checkpoints around the country. 20 of those guns were loaded and seven of those guns had rounds chambered.
KLM shared the news that it has been flying Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter to various museums around the world lately and to celebrate the painting’s return to the Rijksmuseum, the airline is having a contest to give away a trip for two to Amsterdam in April, when the Rijksmuseum is set to reopen.
And, while we’re talking about contests, American Airlines has a new contest with prizes that include business class trips for two on several new routes, including Dallas/Fort Worth to Seoul, Chicago to Dusseldorf and Dallas/Fort Worth to Lima.
Virgin America also kicked off a contest this week to promote flights between Newark (EWR) and both San Francisco (SFO) and Los Angeles (LAX). Enter the Fly Like a Boss contest by April 1st to get 25% off a flight to Newark Airport and a chance to be part of the airline’s April 9th launch party in Newark, which, they promise, includes a chance to hang out on an aircraft with Mashable CEO & founder Pete Cashmore and Virgin Group Founder Sir Richard Branson.
Firearms top the list of items passengers are prohibited from taking past airport security checkpoints and onto airplanes. Yet, during 2012 that didn’t stop travelers from trying to get more than 1,500 handguns and other firearms past Transportation Security Administration officers at U.S. airports.
According to the TSA, last year 1,543 firearms — 1,215 (78%) of them loaded – were discovered in carry-on bags at checkpoints at 199 of the nation’s more than 450 commercial airports.
Most of the firearms discovered were handguns. One gun was found inside a hollowed out book at the Honolulu International Airport. A dissembled gun (and ammunition) was found hidden inside three stuffed animals at Providence T.F. Green Airport in Rhode Island. And while some people certainly try to sneak guns past checkpoints, most travelers caught with firearms at airports claim they simply forgot they had the weapon with them.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (where in 2008 officials tried – and failed – to have the entire airport declared a gun-free zone) holds the number one spot for 2012 on the list of “Top 5 Airports for Gun Discoveries” posted on the TSA’s blog. During 2012, 95 firearms were discovered at the ATL checkpoint.
Other airports on the “Top 5” list include Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (80 firearms), Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (54 firearms), Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (52 firearms) and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (42 firearms found).
In response to the Newtown school shootings, President Barack Obama has put new gun control laws on the table. But Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at the UCLA School of Law and the author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” says he hasn’t heard any new proposals for banning guns in the pre-security areas of airports.
“People are talking about more broad-based types of laws,” said Winkler, “But if there was a mass shooting in a non-secure area of an airport, you’d hear it being discussed.”
In the meantime, TSA continues its efforts to keep firearms (and other prohibited items) from passing through airport checkpoints.
In the first two weeks of January 2013, 49 firearms were discovered in carry-on bags at U.S. airport checkpoints, including one handgun at the Atlanta airport and two at Phoenix Sky Harbor.
During the first two weeks of 2012, “only” 38 firearms were spotted in carry-on bags at airport checkpoints.
On Friday, December 28, 2013, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued some new rules designed to “speed the deployment of Internet services onboard aircraft.”
In its release, the FAA explained that, since 2001, it has been authorizing companies to offer in-flight broadband service on an ad hoc basis. It will now allow airlines to “test systems that meet FCC standards, establish that they do not interfere with aircraft systems, and get FAA approval…up to 50 percent faster, enhancing competition in an important sector of the mobile telecommunications market in the United States and promoting the widespread availability of Internet access to aircraft passengers.”
And, as the TSA winds up the year, the ever-shocking and entertaining TSA Blog reports in its Week in Review that this week “only” sixteen guns (nine of them loaded) were discovered at airport checkpoints. That’s on the low side for the weekly gun finds, but clueless travelers were also nabbed this week for trying to take hand grenades, razors and other weaponry through the checkpoints. And, as the folks at Skift reported earlier this week, this year TSA discovered more than 1,500 guns at airport checkpoints, a new record for the agency.
Are more people traveling armed, or are more armed people traveling and simply “forgetting” that they’ve got loaded guns in their purse or carry-on bag?
I’m just now getting around to taking a good look at the TSA Week in Review from last week
Inert hand grenades, inert training detonators, knives hidden inside the lining of someone’s carry-on… it’s all getting to be so strangely familiar. The same goes for last week’s tally of loaded (25) and unloaded (4) guns.
