Travelers ‘shocked’ to learn guns can be checked in as luggage

“I had no idea. I’m shocked, frankly, that you can check guns,” said Ree Rickard from Lake Placid, New York.

After learning about a shooting that left five dead and eight injured at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International airport, many travelers on the central coast are wondering how and why guns are allowed to be checked in as luggage.

“We didn’t know you can actually check weapons or have them in checked baggage,” Carmel resident Mark Howard said.

Many also took to social media to ask how is it that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) asks people to throw away lotions and nail clippers but allow deadly weapons?

KION reached out to the TSA about its firearm regulations, but the agency declined to comment, citing security reasons. But according to its website, passengers are allowed to check in their guns as long as they are unloaded, locked in a hard-sided container and declared at check-in.

Meanwhile, some are hoping that can be changed.

“Why would it be allowed; we are going to wait till countless people are murdered in this country?” Rickard said. “It’s just so stupid.”

“I hope that’s true that that’s a loophole that they would make efforts to close,” Howard added.

And those traveling on Friday have a little more to think about.

“It gives me pause, and I have concerns for traveling, for being in the airport, and for being anywhere people gather,” said Elliot Light traveling to Los Angeles.

Even though airport security has increased across the county since 9/11, officials say there are still areas they can’t fully protect.

“One of the great challenges of a soft target is, it’s like squeezing a balloon,” said Ron Hosko, former FBI assistant director. “And where I tighten up my security in one place, the balloon expands somewhere else and presents itself as another soft target.”