A record 6,542 guns were seized in 2022 at airport checkpoints across the United States, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said, reflecting the growing gun culture in the country.
The number comes to roughly 18 per day. This is the highest number of weapons seized at US airports in the last year and it is also an indication that the arms race among the American people has increased alarmingly.
TSA Administrator David Pecoske said, “What we see in our checkpoints really reflects what we are seeing in society, and in society, there are more people carrying firearms nowadays.”
The number of weapons found during airport screening has increased steadily since 2010, except in 2020 during the pandemic. Most of them claimed that they had forgotten that they had weapons. However, he admitted that getting the weapon into the wrong hands on board the aircraft could be dangerous. Weapons have been confiscated at airports as far away as Burbank, California, to Bangor, Maine.
But it tends to happen more at larger airports in areas where the laws are more favorable to carrying a gun, Pekoske said. The top 10 list for weapons receipts in 2022 includes Dallas, Austin and Houston in Texas, three airports in Florida, and Nashville, Atlanta, Phoenix and Denver in Tennessee. The consumption of guns in America has increased very fast. Statistics show that in 2020, gun manufacturers manufactured more than 11 million guns. This figure was 10 times more than the total guns made in the year 2000.
(With inputs from agencies)
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