South Carolina woman arrested after trying to board flight with loaded gun, TSA says

A pistol-packing South Carolina woman was arrested at a New York airport after security found a loaded gun in her carry-on luggage.

The woman was trying to board a flight out of LaGuardia Airport on Thursday, according to the Transportation Security Administration. As she was heading through a checkpoint, a security officer spotted something suspicious on an x-ray machine.

Port Authority Police were alerted and officers took the woman into custody for questioning.

Inside the bag, authorities found a loaded, five-shot .38 caliber revolver.

She was arrested on a weapons charge, according to the TSA, and “also faces a stiff federal civil penalty for bringing a gun to an airport security checkpoint.”

Fines for attempting to bring a loaded gun onto a plane can range from $3,000 to $10,000.

This marks the third gun caught by security at LaGuardia this year, the TSA said. Officials stopped three in 2020, and seven in 2019.

Despite a decline in air travel due to the pandemic, some airports have been seeing more guns than usual.

Security at Salt Lake City International Airport has caught 50 loaded guns stowed in carry-on luggage so far in 2021, the Deseret News reported, compared to 33 at the same point last year.

Travelers can bring firearms along to their destination, but not loaded, and not with them in the cabin.

“Guns can be transported on a flight if they are unloaded, packed in a locked, hard-sided case and declared to the airline. The airline will be sure that the gun travels with checked baggage in the belly of the plane, never in the cabin of the plane,” the TSA said. “At the airport during the check-in process, a passenger needs to go to the airline ticket counter to declare the firearm, ammunition and any firearm parts.”

This story was originally published May 24, 2021 at 12:53 PM with the headline "South Carolina woman arrested after trying to board flight with loaded gun, TSA says."