Charleston Man Provides Yeager TSA Screeners First Handgun Confiscation of 2020
It took less than one week for Transportation Security Administration officers to detect and confiscate the first handgun of 2020 at the departing passenger screening checkpoint at Charleston’s Yeager Airport.
On Sunday, TSA officers found a .22 caliber handgun loaded with five bullets in the carry-on bag of a Charleston man.
The passenger, apparently unaware of the handgun’s presence in his carry-on bag, was cleared to board his flight — minus his weapon — after questioning by Yeager Airport Police, who cited the man after they were notified of the incident by TSA personnel.
Attempting to board a commercial aircraft while carrying a weapon on one’s person or in a carry-on bag can result in both stiff fines and loss of TSA Pre-Check status. Such incidents can also cause fellow passengers to miss flights, because the security checkpoint comes to a standstill until police resolve the situation.
Last year, a Thanksgiving Day incident in which a Sissonville man was found to be carrying two handguns — one loaded and one accompanied by loose bullets — at Yeager’s TSA checkpoint, brought to seven the number of weapons confiscated at the Charleston airport during 2019.
Six handguns were detected by TSA officers at Yeager in both 2018 and 2017, while 10 weapons were confiscated in 2016.
It is legal for passengers to travel with firearms, provided they are unloaded and packed in locked, hard-sided cases placed in checked baggage. Ammunition must be packed separately in checked baggage. Both items must be declared to airline personnel at baggage check-in gates.
Nationally, more than 4,000 handguns have been detected annually at TSA passenger screening checkpoints in recent years. Of those weapons, more than 80 percent were loaded, and about one in three contained a round in the firing chamber, according to TSA data.
Reach Rick Steelhammer at [email protected], 304-348-5169 or follow
@rsteelhammer on Twitter.
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