As air travel rebounds to nearly pre-pandemic levels during the holidays, federal Transportation Security Administration agents at the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field caught 42 guns in security screenings this year as of Tuesday, a number nearly double the 23 stopped in 2019 and 2020, officials said.
At Northwest Arkansas National Airport, the spike is even more pronounced — 21 guns found as of Dec. 1, compared to 11 in 2019 and six in 2020, according to TSA statistics.
The numbers in the state align with national TSA numbers, with the agency reporting more than 5,000 firearms stopped at security checkpoints as of Dec. 7 — a 20-year record.
Effectively all of the incidents came from people forgetting their firearm in their carry-on bag, said Patricia Mancha, spokesperson for TSA’s southwest region.
While travelers can fly with a firearm in their checked luggage, attempting to bring a gun through TSA security is a serious matter, Mancha said.
Concealed-carry permits don’t allow the holders to carry a firearm onto a plane, according to TSA.
Passengers should be troubled by the uptick in firearms caught by security, Mancha said.
“You don’t wanna see a gun on a plane,” she said.
Mancha said it was hard to speculate about the cause of the increase, but suggested that Americans being very lax about carrying firearms could play into it.
TSA will fine passengers and suspend the benefits of TSA PreCheck membership if a gun is found in their carry-on.
Penalties for having loaded firearms, or unloaded firearms with accessible ammunition, in a carry-on bag range from $3,000 to $10,000 the first time and $10,000 to $13,910, for repeat violations, Mancha said. For unloaded firearms, it’s $1,500 to $2,475.
TSA statistics indicate that more than 85% of the firearms their officers find are loaded.
“It’s not ‘I brought a gun, oh well’,” Mancha said.
Checking their bag for prohibited items, like guns, is “the traveler’s responsibility,” she said.
The easiest way to avoid this is to completely unpack and repack the bag used as a carry-on when prepping for a trip, she added.
Even if there is no criminal intent, “there’s still big consequences” to having a gun in a carry-on, Clinton National spokesperson Shane Carter said.
Police at the airport, such as Little Rock Police at Clinton National, are called to identify and confiscate firearms found during security screenings, Mancha said.
If a traveler is a felon prohibited from having a gun or has some other weapons charge, they may be arrested on the spot, Mancha said, but more likely they are taken to the Pulaski County jail for booking and then released.
Although airport officials work with travelers, people who have to go through this process almost always miss their flights, TSA Officer Timothy Lam said.
Russell White, chief of police at Northwest National, outlined the process from the law enforcement side.
“What we do is take the firearm and the person, and we’ll bring them into the Police Department,” White said. “We just do some basic checks on them to make sure they’re not a felon and that they can legally have a firearm, check to make sure the firearm is not stolen, those kinds of things. If everything’s good with it, what we do is either let them take it back to their car or we will hold it and they can pick it up when they come back.” Police do, however, provide TSA with the person’s information and there’s usually a civil penalty to pay, White said.
Nathan Smith, Benton County prosecuting attorney, said his office doesn’t prosecute cases when there’s no criminal intent. He said the only criminal charge would be carrying a weapon and the law requires the person to have the intent to unlawfully employ it.
People who simply forget and leave it in their bag didn’t intend anything criminal, he said.
“Obviously, it would be different if someone tried to sneak something on to a plane, but that hasn’t happened,” Smith said.
Weapons and other prohibited items can slow down the entire security process and make long lines during holiday travel worse, Man-cha said.
If a traveler does want to fly with a firearm, it must be locked in a hard case that cannot be pried open to access the gun, which can often involve more than one lock, Lam said. Any type of lock can be used, but travelers should expect to have to open their locks at the TSA’s request if they choose not to use a TSA standard pattern lock.
Passengers must also declare their firearm with their airline to get a card that they will place with their case in their luggage, Lam said.
Any magazines must be empty of bullets, and ammo must be in some sort of container, not loose, Lam said.
Information for this article was contributed by Ron Wood of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette.