More people than ever tried to bring guns onto planes last year, TSA says

More people than ever were caught with firearms — the vast majority of them loaded — at security checkpoints at U.S. airports in 2023, federal officials said.

The numbers remain small: Out of 858 million people screened before boarding an airplane, Transportation Security Administration agents found just 6,737 guns. But that’s still the most ever found in a single year, capping a three-year span in which each year saw more guns confiscated than the last.

Nearly all of those guns were discovered through X-rays of carry-on luggage, TSA officials said. And most of the time the traveler told agents they left the gun in their bags accidentally.

It wasn’t quite a surprise TSA found more guns, officials said: Nearly 100 million more people passed through U.S. airports last year than the year before. And the rate at which agents found firearms actually fell: In 2023, TSA found 7.8 guns per 1 million passengers, less than the 8.6 guns per 1 million passengers the agency recorded in 2022.

“More people are travelling — there’s more travelers now,” said Lorie Dankers, a TSA spokeswoman. “It kind of makes sense that we’re detecting more.”

But the stubbornly high number of passengers attempting to get through security with loaded guns in their bags, whether they knew the weapons were there or not, still remained alarming to officials with the federal agency tasked with keeping contraband off U.S. airliners.

“It’s a little bit of a mystery, all around,” Dankers said. “(Firearms) have never been allowed on airplanes.”

Jason Pantages, a security director for TSA in the Los Angeles region, said that nationwide, 93% of the guns found in people’s bags were loaded.