By now, everyone knows or should know that you can’t take a gun on a plane.
Still, the Transportation Safety Administration set a 20-year agency record last year for firearms found in passengers’ carry-on luggage, TSA officials said at a news conference Thursday morning.
“You can’t take a gun in your carry-on luggage, that’s the difference, but you can take it in your checked luggage,” TSA spokeswoman Patricia Mancha said at the mid-morning event at Brownsville-South Padre Island International Airport.
The important point is that you must declare the firearm when you check your baggage.
Mancha said TSA officers around the country found about 4,000 guns in travelers’ carry-on luggage last year. “This year we’re trending to possibly surpass that. That’s unacceptable,” she said.
“It’s really about what you have to do if you want to travel with your gun,” she said. “We don’t want to keep anyone from traveling with their gun, but what you must do is bring it in a hard-sided container that locks. It must be unloaded, with no bullets in the chamber or inside the gun.
“You can bring ammunition. It just cannot be in the gun, and then the last step is it must be declared with the airline at the time that you check your luggage because every piece of luggage that comes through is X-rayed and photographed just like everything you carry on,” she said.
Mancha said this year at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, TSA found four guns in passengers’ carry-on luggage on the same day. Every single one of them said they forgot the gun was in the carry-on.
“Another thing that maybe people don’t think about when they leave the gun in their carry-on is that they may miss their flight because when a gun is found our TSA officers will stop the line and call the police.”
Once the line is closed, everyone behind the person with the gun has to go to the next lane, “so you impact not only yourself but everyone in line behind you. You’re just making the line longer,” she said.
“So, fines up to $14,000, possible arrest and the possibility of you missing your flight, not to mention the impacts it may have on your personal life. … Also, we actually find guns in people’s checked luggage that they didn’t declare and then they get fined,” she said.
TSA supervisor Juanita Landeros demonstrated how to pack a gun into a hard-sided case, as well as what a rifle carrying case looks like. These cases are prevalent during hunting season in the Rio Grande Valley and northern Mexico.
Additionally, Landeros showed a variety of items voluntarily abandoned by passengers when they were discovered during check-in. Included were construction tools like a hammer, utility knives, various pocket- knives, a corkscrew with a knife and others.
“Construction tools that incorporate a knife or can be used as a weapon, any type of knife that has a blade are not allowed in carry-on,” she said.
