Despite increased awareness of security since 9/11, air travelers are still arriving at airport security checkpoints in large numbers with dangerous weapons according to a newspaper report. Using Las Vegas’ McCarran Int’l Airport as an example, the Las Vegas Review-Journal obtained records that federal screeners at McCarran confiscated nearly 4,500 “deadly or dangerous weapons” in an 18-month period that ended Oct. 31.
The newspaper also reports Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers at the Las Vegas airport collected explosives about every three weeks, a gun every two weeks and a box cutter every day. McCarran travelers also arrived with more than 136,000 other items prohibited on flights, including baseball bats, arrows and ice picks.
TSA spokesman Nico Melendez told the Review-Journal that the situation is not unique to McCarran. “We have found more than 8 million prohibited items nationwide since February 2002,” he says. “Since we started collecting the numbers in 2002, we have found over 50,000 box cutters. Why? People will say, ‘Oh, I forgot that was in there.’ Same thing with Swiss Army knives. I had a guy tell me he forgot a .38-caliber gun that weighs 10 pounds in his bag. How could you possibly forget that?”
