Security agents catch 13th gun this year at Pittsburgh International Airport

Security agents stopped a Swissvale woman with a loaded gun and package of ammunition at a checkpoint Thursday at Pittsburgh International Airport, a Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman said.

The 9mm handgun was loaded with two rounds and packed alongside a container of 35 other bullets, said TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein.

Passengers can bring their firearms, but they must be packed, unloaded, in a hard-sided carrying case, and it must be checked with other baggage, Farbstein said.

A concealed carry permit does not exempt a traveler from this process.

Allegheny County Police confiscated the gun, the 13th stopped by airport security this year.

Travelers bringing guns to the airport, inadvertently or otherwise, has become such an issue in recent years that federal prosecutors in October began asking the sheriff’s in travelers’ home counties to revoke their concealed carry permit.

Air travel plummeted in early 2020 as the covid-19 pandemic swept across the world. Despite the decline in passengers, TSA officers have been catching more guns per person in Pittsburgh and across the country.

Prior to the pandemic, the number of guns caught at security checkpoints in Pittsburgh had been creeping slightly upward for years: 32 in 2017, 34 in 2018 and 35 in 2019, according to TSA data. In 2021, officers stopped 22 travelers with guns at the airport despite a pandemic-driven decline in air travel.

When a security officer spots a gun on the checkpoint X-ray machine, the entire security line grinds to halt while Allegheny County Police respond. County police alert the FBI and, while most travelers are permitted to take their flights, they can be fined anywhere from $3,000 to $13,910.