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Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers spotted the gun in the Hamburg man’s carry-on bag and alerted airport authority police, who arrived at the checkpoint, confiscated the gun, and arrested the man, TSA officials said.
It was the second gun caught within a week at the airport and the third caught so far this year, officials said.
One week earlier, TSA officers stopped a Quakertown man with a loaded gun.
Civil penalties for bringing a handgun into a checkpoint can stretch into thousands of dollars, depending on mitigating circumstances, according to the official TSA website.
"This applies to travelers with or without concealed gun carry permits because even though an individual may have a concealed carry permit, it does not allow for a firearm to be carried onto an airplane," the website says.
Additionally, if a traveler with a gun is a member of TSA PreCheck, that individual will lose their TSA PreCheck privileges.
Click here for a full list of civil penalties.
Passengers are permitted to travel with firearms in checked baggage if they are properly packaged and declared at their airline ticket counter, TSA officials said.
"Firearms must be unloaded, packed in a hard-sided locked case, and packed separately from ammunition. Then the locked case should be taken to the airline check-in counter to be declared," the website says.
For details on how to properly travel with a firearm visit the official TSA website.
In 2020, TSA caught approximately 10 firearms per million passengers as compared to about five firearms per million passengers in 2019. Of the guns caught by TSA in 2020, about 83 percent were loaded.
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