What TSA confiscates: the data (and the weirdest finds)

Firearms at checkpoints, year by year

Firearms are the confiscation statistic TSA tracks most carefully, because every one triggers a law-enforcement response. The counts below come from TSA's national year-end press releases. The long arc is steep: airport gun interceptions up 152% over the past decade (~2014–2024); TSA links the rise partly to permitless-carry laws in 29 states.

• Dashes mean TSA did not publish that figure for the year — we don't fill gaps with estimates.
• No full-year 2025 national total had been published as of July 2026; the table ends at the most recent complete year.

Two readings worth pausing on. First, 2023 remains the all-time record at 6,737firearms; 2024's small dip was the first annual decrease since the pandemic year. Second, the loaded percentage keeps climbing — from 88% in 2022 to 94% in 2024 — which is why TSA treats every one of these as a genuine safety event rather than an oversight.

The airports where the most guns are caught

Gun catches concentrate heavily in the South and Southwest, where passenger volumes and gun ownership overlap. These are the CY2024 top five; Atlanta led the nation for the ninth consecutive year. (Ranks 6–10 conflict across secondary reports, so we publish only the five that primary sources confirm.)

Flying through one of these? Check the live security picture before you go — Atlanta (ATL) wait times, Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW), and Houston Bush (IAH) all have their own pages. A gun catch shuts down a lane while police respond, so the airports on this list eat more unpredictable checkpoint pauses than most.

The weird-items hall of fame

Every January, TSA publishes an official Top-10 of the strangest things its officers found the previous year. These aren't internet rumors — each entry below comes from TSA's own lists, with the airport where it happened.

TSA's Top 10 unusual finds of 2025

TSA's Top 10 unusual finds of 2024

A pattern across both years: the strangest catches are rarely at the biggest airports. Boise, Kona, Quad Cities, Portsmouth, Asheville — small checkpoints make the list constantly, while the mega-hubs mostly show up in the firearms table instead. Miami is the exception that does both: snakes in pants in 2024, turtles and Nesquik bullets in 2025.

What travelers surrender most often

The everyday reality of checkpoint confiscation is far less exotic than the hall of fame. Per TSA's most recent published volume figure (March 2022), the largest airports collect up to about 2,000 pounds — one ton — of surrendered prohibited items per month, and the most common are knives, martial-arts items, and large tools. TSA publishes no per-item national counts, so that ton-a-month figure is the best available window into the routine flow.

Almost all of it is avoidable with one bag-check before you leave: our guide to what you can bring through security covers the everyday judgment calls, and the complete prohibited-items list settles the edge cases. If you legally travel with a gun, it can fly — declared, unloaded, and locked in checked baggage — and flying with firearms walks through the exact procedure.

Where confiscated stuff actually goes

"Confiscated" is mostly the wrong word, and the distinction decides where an item ends up.

• Firearms go to the police, not TSA. TSA does not confiscate firearms — local law enforcement removes the person and the gun; arrest or citation depends on local law. The traveler also loses TSA PreCheck eligibility for at least 5 years.
• Plus a federal fine. The civil penalty for a firearm at a checkpoint runs up to $17,062 per TSA’s current firearms factsheet (was $14,950 in the Jan 2025 release), plus possible federal prosecution referral.
• Everything else is "voluntarily surrendered." Your oversized pocketknife isn't seized — you choose to hand it over rather than miss your flight (or run it back to your car). Surrendered items are held at least 30 days for lost-and-found; unclaimed items are destroyed, turned over to a state surplus agency, or sold — the state, not TSA, keeps sale proceeds (e.g., Pennsylvania resells TSA-surrendered items via GovDeals auctions).

So yes — the internet lore is true: you can buy other people's checkpoint mistakes at state surplus auctions, often in bulk lots of pocketknives and multitools. The proceeds fund the states that run the sales, not TSA.

More checkpoint data

This page is part of our data series on U.S. air travel. For the traffic side of the story, see the busiest airports in the U.S. and the world and the busiest days to fly — the same crowds that set throughput records also set the pace of the confiscation numbers above.

How many guns does TSA find each year?

TSA intercepted 6,678 firearms at airport checkpoints in 2024 — about 18 per day, at 277 different airports — and 94% of them were loaded. That was the first annual decrease since 2020, down slightly from the all-time record of 6,737 in 2023. A decade earlier the count was far lower: airport gun interceptions are up 152% over roughly 2014 to 2024.

What happens if TSA finds a gun in your carry-on?

TSA itself does not confiscate the firearm — officers stop the bag and call local law enforcement, who take custody of the gun and the traveler. Whether that means an arrest or a citation depends on local law. On top of that, TSA can impose a civil penalty of up to $17,062 per its current firearms factsheet, and the traveler loses TSA PreCheck eligibility for at least 5 years.

What is the weirdest thing TSA has ever found?

TSA's own pick for 2025 was a replica pipe bomb with fake C4 blocks at Boise, which the traveler claimed were training aids and abandoned at the checkpoint. Runners-up on the official lists include live turtles hidden in pants and in a bra (Newark and Miami, 2025), two live snakes in a passenger's pants (Miami, 2024), and a gun wrapped in tinfoil inside a teapot (Portland, 2024).

Where do TSA confiscated items go?

Voluntarily surrendered items are held at least 30 days in case the owner reclaims them through lost-and-found. After that, unclaimed items are destroyed, turned over to a state surplus agency, or sold — and the state, not TSA, keeps the sale proceeds. Pennsylvania, for example, resells TSA-surrendered items through GovDeals online auctions. Firearms are a different story: those go to local law enforcement on the spot.

Cite or share this data

Plain-text citation: Source: tsawaittimes.app — What TSA confiscates: the data (and the weirdest finds), 2026.

Journalists and bloggers: the tables and any charts on this page are free to republish with a link to this page, under CC BY 4.0. Underlying figures come from TSA press releases and the other primary sources listed below.