Last year, the US Transport Security Administration (TSA) seized 6,542 guns from people about to board planes at 262 airports – a sixfold increase since 2010. Jeffrey Price, former assistant director of security at Denver international airport and co-author of a book on aviation security, said he wasn’t surprised. “It is very alarming,” Balram Bheodari, manager of Atlanta airport, told a congressional hearing last year about the record number of guns seized on his watch. In 2014, Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law pushed by the National Rifle Association allowing people to carry loaded guns in the state’s airports. In 2015, ABC News revealed that the TSA sent undercover investigators through airport checkpoints carrying real guns and fake bombs.

Source: The Guardian February 23, 2023 04:25 UTC