The Transportation Security Administration described the firearm as a Beretta.
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Howell says TSA immediately called police, confiscated the bag and escorted the traveler out of the checkpoint area. “You’ve just gotta use common sense“.
All TSA officers will also receive new training in an effort to improve performance.
The government agency has spent tens of millions of dollars on other types of failed equipment.
The move comes on the heels of an embarrassing series of gaffes by the TSA earlier this year, resulting in the reassignment of acting TSA administrator Melvin Carraway after an undercover investigation revealed a shocking lapse in security among TSA screeners.
According to House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul, the scanners made by L-3 were the ones named in the investigation that were “a big part of the problem”.
Safety is the first concern of the TSA, and having these items in bags that are traveling with you on the aircraft is risky to other travelers and can be easily mistaken as an intentional attempt to bring a prohibited item onto an aircraft. TSA officials said that practice will be “scaled back”.
He told a congressional panel in Washington last month that agents were going to reintroduce hand-head metal detectors whenever a flier sets off an alarm on a full-body scanner. “The TSA was compelling toddlers, pregnant women, cancer survivors – everyone – to stand inside radiation machines that didn’t work… behind closed doors, supervisors instructed us to begin patting down the sides of every fifth passenger as a clumsy workaround to the scanners’ embarrassing vulnerability.”
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“In a situation like this, if one bad person gets through and they have a bomb or a weapon, it could be a awful tragedy for hundreds of people”, Carper explained.
