ROANOKE, Va. – Transportation Security Administration officers at Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport said they stopped a man who was attempting to bring a loaded handgun on board a plane on Thursday.
TSA said they notified local police, who then confiscated the gun and removed the man from the security checkpoint for questioning. He is a Radford resident and was cited on a criminal charge.
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“We have a procedure in place for properly packing a firearm for a flight, and bringing a gun to a checkpoint is certainly not the proper procedure. Guns need to be unloaded, packed in a locked hard-sided case and taken to your airline check-in counter so that it is transported in the underbelly of the aircraft. This way nobody has access to it during the flight. The man now faces a federal civil financial penalty for bringing his gun to the checkpoint.”
Robin “Chuck” Burke, TSA’s Federal Security Director for the airport
This is the second firearm that officers have caught at the checkpoint this year.