LITTLE ROCK — David Huckabee, a son of Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, was arrested at Little Rock's airport Thursday after a federal X-ray technician detected a loaded Glock pistol in his carry-on luggage.
"I removed the bag and asked Mr. Huckabee if he knew what he had in the bag," Little Rock police officer Arthur Nugent wrote in a report after being summoned to a security checkpoint. "He replied he did now."
Huckabee, 26, later pleaded guilty in Little Rock District Court after being charged with a misdemeanor count of possessing a weapon in a prohibited place.
"It was a silly mistake," Huckabee told reporters as he left the Pulaski County Jail. When asked whether it would affect his father's presidential campaign, Huckabee responded, "It shouldn't."
"My wife and I love our son. What he did was irresponsible but not intentional," Mike Huckabee said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. Mike Huckabee said his son grabbed the bag on the way to the airport and didn't realize the gun was inside.
"It's one of those stupid things," Mike Huckabee said. "He knows better."
District Judge Lee Munson gave Huckabee a one-year suspended jail sentence and ordered him into 10 days of community service - which Huckabee can avoid by paying $100. Huckabee will be on probation for a year. Fines and costs totaled $855.
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The son of the former Arkansas governor held a concealed weapons permit at the time of the incident but state police are taking steps to revoke it. The elder Huckabee, who said last week that Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui perhaps could have been stopped if a teacher or student had also been armed, also has a concealed weapons permit.
Nugent said David Huckabee had a .40-caliber Glock pistol in his black carry-on bag. Eight live rounds were in the gun - none in the chamber - and a nine-round clip was also in the bag. The weapon and ammunition were detained by Little Rock police while David Huckabee's gun permit was seized and given to the Arkansas State Police.
Little Rock Police Lt. Terry Hastings said it is not unusual for people to forget they have a gun in their carry-on luggage.
"He just forgot it was there," Hastings said.
A Transportation Security Administration worker summoned police after seeing the image of a gun on an X-ray machine. Little Rock police checked the bag and found the gun and ammunition, said Sari Koshetz, a Transportation Security Administration spokesman in Miami.
Koshetz and Little Rock police did not know to where Huckabee was flying.
Koshetz said any interruption of security checks for other passengers would have lasted only a moment. She said Huckabee - whom she declined to identify by name - was cooperative and that other passengers were not endangered.
In addition to the criminal charge, TSA can seek separate civil penalties of up to $10,000, Koshetz said.
"In any situation like that, we will investigate the situation and determine whether civil penalties will be imposed," Koshetz said.
The Arkansas State Police suspended Huckabee's concealed-weapon permit and once it receives word from the court about the guilty plea it will convert the suspension to a permanent revocation. Because people are barred from holding a concealed-gun permit if they have a weapons-related violation on their record from the previous five years, it will be 2012 before Huckabee can reapply, state police spokesman Bill Sadler said.
In 1998, David Huckabee was one of two boys fired from a Boy Scout camp after a stray dog was killed when it wandered onto camp property. David Huckabee, 17 at the time, said the dog appeared ill; no charges were filed. The elder Huckabee said then that politics was behind the dog-killing accusation.