Record number of guns found at U.S. airports in 2021, despite travel slump

The number of travelers attempting to pass through U.S. airport security checkpoints with firearms hit a record high in 2021, even as air travel languished below pre-pandemic levels, U.S. media reported recently.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has stopped travelers carrying more than 5,700 firearms at U.S. airports since the beginning of 2021, far surpassing the previous record of 4,432 firearms in 2019, and about 85 percent of the firearms found in 2021 were loaded, The Bangor Daily News quoted TSA spokesperson R. Carter Langston as saying.

The surge in gun discoveries came even though travel demand remained about 25 percent below the pre-pandemic pace of 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

"The increase is probably tied to a jump in overall U.S. gun sales since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic," reported the daily newspaper covering a large portion of central and eastern Maine.

In total, nearly 3 million more guns were sold between March and July of 2020 than would have ordinarily been sold during those months, according to a July 2020 report by the Brookings Institute, a Washington think tank.