TSA stops Virginia man with loaded handgun at Richmond International Airport
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A Chesterfield man received a summons from police at Richmond International Airport July 21, after a Transportation Security Administration officer found a handgun loaded with eight bullets in the traveler’s carry-on bag.
A TSA officer who was staffing the checkpoint X-ray monitor detected the handgun inside the man’s carry-on bag as it entered the X-ray machine.
TSA officials notified the airport police, who responded to the checkpoint, confiscated the gun and issued a summons to the man on weapons charges.
It was the seventh firearm that TSA officers have caught at the airport so far this calendar year. In 2018, TSA stopped 14 guns at the airport’s checkpoints.
Passengers are permitted to travel with firearms in checked baggage if they are properly packaged and declared. Firearms must be unloaded, packed in a hard-sided case, locked, and packed separately from ammunition. Firearm possession laws vary by state and locality.
Nationwide last year, 4,239 firearms were discovered in carry-on bags at checkpoints across the country, averaging about 11.6 firearms per day, approximately a 7-percent increase nationally in firearm discoveries from the total of 3,957 detected in 2017. Eighty-six percent of firearms detected at checkpoints last year were loaded and just more than a third of them had a bullet in the chamber.
