I can't say that I was particularly shocked to learn that a record three people in a single week had been stopped at Yeager Airport's security gate for carrying loaded handguns in their carry-ons during a week in which I, too, was traveling from CRW.
After all, during the drive to the airport along I-64 from the Steelhammer Compound and its nonprofit subsidiary, the Cracked Foundation Foundation, both in the artists' colony of Cross Lanes, I was surrounded by commuters living in a state with a 60 percent gun ownership rate, the nation's fifth-highest. I probably passed within a few feet of 100 or more weapons as I sped toward the airport in what turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt to make our early morning flight. Should we cross paths again, please remember I'm truly sorry that I cut you off, angry white Camry driver with the "Life Is Good" bumper sticker.
As it turns out, the three gun owners who had their weapons seized by Transportation Security Administration officers at Yeager helped the TSA set a new national one-week record for security checkpoint gun seizures - most of them involving people who "forgot" they still had handguns in their carry-on bags. I can speak from experience about how easy it is to forget you're toting a potentially deadly weapon in your gym bag as you approach the security gate. My 10-ounce aerosol can of Barbasol shave cream was seized for being too big a safety risk, although three 3.4-ounce containers of the substance would apparently have been allowed.
Anyway, TSA officers cited a record 73 passengers attempting to take handguns through security across the country last week. Sixty-eight of those guns were loaded and 27 had rounds in the firing chamber, which violates common sense safety rules as well as federal regulations. Last week's record tops by five a previous weekly gun seizure high point set last October.
Though you'd think more people would be catching on to the fact that airport security screeners want to stop people from bringing guns and other potential weapons aboard passenger planes in the years following 9/11, the opposite has been true. During the past five years, according to TSA records, the number of annual security gate gun seizures has more than doubled, from 1,320 in 2011 to 2,653 in 2015.
Maybe that's why the TSA's blog carried a post with the tongue-in-cheek (I think) headline "TSA Travel Tips Tuesday: Leave Your Grenades at Home."
"After reading the title of this post, your first thought probably was, 'That's obvious,'" according to the September, 2013, blog post. "Not always so," the post continued. "Year to date, our officers have discovered 43 grenades in carry-on baggage and 40 grenades in checked bags."
While most of the grenades had been defused or were replicas, some were live smoke, flare or flash-bang grenades.
Guess the new home for the replica 10-ounce Barbasol can I've been working on will be the trash can.