Cannonballs, Samurai Swords, Chastity Belts: An Inventory of the Items Found at TSA Checkpoints in 2012

A year's worth of (weird, revealing, scary) data from the nation's airports

The Transportation Safety Administration isn't merely a government agency. It is also a kind of real-time library, tracking the human folly that plays out at some of the human folly-est places there are: airports. The TSA has now released information from a year's worth of checkpoint-monitoring ... and the information it has presented is, unsurprisingly, folly-filled. (Among the objects confiscated from passengers: swords, bottles of gunpowder, and "more inert grenades than you would ever imagine.") 

Below, the TSA's takeaways -- some of them literal -- from a year's worth of airport screenings and confiscations:

• Passengers screened, total, in 2012: 637,582,122
• Passengers screened, per day: 1,746,800
• Total firearms discovered in carry-on bags at checkpoints across the country: 1,543
• Number of those firearms that were loaded 1,215 
• Percentage of those firearms that were loaded: 78.7
• Number of airports at which firearms were found: 199
• Airport that had the highest number of firearms found: Atlanta (ATL)
• Number of firearms found, total, at ATL alone: 95
• Average number of firearms found per week at ATL alone: 1.8

Ways people tried to conceal their guns:

• Disassembled and hidden in three different stuffed animals (PVD: Providence TF Green Airport)
• Disguised as a pen (ABE: Allentown)
• Wrapped in aluminum foil inside a DVD player (.22-caliber magazine -- FAT: Fresno)
• Hidden in a potted plant, presumably in an effort to sneak it past agents (PDX: Portland)
• Hidden in a hollowed-out book (FAR: Fargo; HNL: Honolulu)

Explosives discovered in passenger baggage:

• A live 40-mm high explosive grenade (DFW: Dallas/Fort Worth)
• A bottle wrapped in black electrical tape and filled with flash powder and three M-80 fireworks (PHL: Philadelphia)
• A black powder flask filled with 5 ounces of gunpowder (SYR: Syracuse)
• An explosively viable cannonball (FLL: Fort Lauderdale)
• A live blasting cap (RDM: Redmond, Oregeon)
Seal Bombs (SEA: Seattle)
• Gunpowder (BOS: Boston)
• 22 black powder pellets (SLC: Salt Lake City)
• A 16-ounce can of gunpowder (ANC: Anchorage)
• 6 pounds of gunpowder, detonation cords, and a timing fuse (GJT: Grand Junction, Colorado)
• 15 tubes of gunpowder (DEN: Denver)
• A powder horn with approximately 3 ounces of gunpowder (LIT: Little Rock)
• A live flash bang grenade, accompanied by 20 rounds of 7.62-mm ammunition (VPS: Northwest Florida Regional Airport)

Items discovered that may or may not have been actually explosive:

• An inert IED with a block of simulated SEMTEX-H, and a simulated blasting cap (CSG: Columbus)
• An inert detonator -- discovered in a passenger's pocket during a pat-down search (CHS: Charleston)
• A watch resembling an IED component (OAK: Oakland)
• An expended AT-4 rocket launcher (LBE: Latrobe Airport outside of Pittsburgh)
• A grenade launcher (SEA: Seattle Tacoma)
• An M147 firing device with a blasting cap taped to it (RNO: Reno)
Several replica Claymore antipersonnel mines (EWR: Newark, GUM: Guam, and TUL: Tulsa)
• Several inert warheads (SLC: Salt Lake City, PVD: Providence, NYL: Yuma, RIC: Richmond)
• Inert mortar and bazooka rounds (ELP: El Paso, DFW: Dallas/ Fort Worth, TUS: Tucson)
• Inert explosive components in a golf club case (AUS: Austin)
• A simulated detonating cord, simulated sheet explosives, and two 3.5-ounce cans of propane (ORF: Norfolk)

Other items discovered:

• Spear guns
• Bear mace hidden in a sock
• Dead venomous snakes
• Multiple cane swords
• Stun guns ("a shocking amount of")
• A gassed up chainsaw
• An 8-ounce bottle of vodka (discovered in a passenger's pants)
• A knife mounted on a walker
• Eels
• A marijuana-filled grenade
• Samurai swords
• A stun cane
• Jingle bell shotgun shells
• A chastity belt