The Transportation Security Administration has detected a record 43 firearms at Midway Airport so far this year.
TSA agents found a handgun in a passenger’s carry-on bag Friday, breaking the previous annual record of 42 firearms, set in 2021, according to a statement from TSA.
After the firearm was detected on the X-ray screen, a TSA officer alerted Chicago police who confiscated the weapon.
“It’s troubling that we’ve set an all-time record for firearms stopped at the checkpoint with two months still left in the year,” Illinois TSA Federal Security Director Dereck Starks said in a statement. “In addition to the serious safety risk these incidents pose, they also slow down the screening process for all passengers when we’re forced to temporarily close down a lane.”
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TSA determines the penalty for a firearm violation on a case-by-case basis, but fines can reach up to $14,950. The agency will also revoke TSA PreCheck eligibility for at least five years for any passenger caught at a checkpoint with a firearm.
Nationwide, officers have intercepted 5,072 firearms at airport security checkpoints, placing them on track to pass last year’s record of 6,542 firearms.
So far this year, officers have found 59 firearms at O’Hare Airport, with 11 found last month alone. In 2022, there were 85 firearms stopped at O’Hare checkpoints.
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While the number of firearms seized at security appears to be rising nationwide, the issue is “not as severe at either Chicago airport as some others,” a TSA spokeswoman told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Sheldon Howard Jacobson, a professor at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and aviation security expert, said the rising numbers can likely be attributed to an increase in travel after the pandemic and advancements in technology.
Jacobson said places with more lenient gun laws and large international airports such as Atlanta Hartsfield, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston Bush Intercontinental and Phoenix Sky Harbor will account for the most firearms detected.
In most cases, the weapons found are legally registered to the owner who “just forgot that it’s in their bag,” Sheldon said.
Jacobson said the TSA found an average of 18 firearms in carry-on bags each day nationwide last year. “It is not a large number,” he said.
Asked if the rising numbers are cause for concern, Sheldon said: “It’s not what they catch that we have to be concerned about, it’s what they don’t catch.”
Passengers are allowed to bring firearms in checked baggage if they are unloaded, packed separately from ammunition in a locked hardback case and declared at the airline check-in counter. However, with varying laws across the country, passengers must check firearm possession laws in the jurisdictions they are flying to and from.
