‘Very alarming’: US airport screenings see a surge in loaded guns

You can’t carry a bottle of water on board the plane, but plenty of people – knowingly and unknowingly – try to carry gun

A Connecticut woman was the first of the week, walking her child through security at New York’s JFK airport with a loaded gun in her purse and “one in the chamber”, as officials put it.

Over the following days, an X-ray machine detected a 9mm pistol and ammunition in the hand luggage of a passenger in Philadelphia, a .45 caliber handgun and seven bullets in the carry-on bag of a man boarding a plane at New York’s Westchester airport, and a loaded weapon carried through screening in Wisconsin.