Record 6,542 guns intercepted at US airport security in ’22

ATLANTA - The woman flying out of Philadelphia’s airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. But what was more important was what she forgot to unpack: a loaded .380-caliber handgun in a black holster.

The weapon was one of the 6,542 guns the Transportation Security Administration intercepted last year at airport checkpoints across the country. The number - roughly 18 per day - was an all-time high for guns intercepted at U.S. airports, and is sparking concern at a time when more Americans are armed.

“What we see in our checkpoints really reflects what we’re seeing in society, and in society there are more people carrying firearms nowadays,” TSA administrator David Pekoske said.

With the exception of pandemic-disrupted 2020, the number of weapons intercepted at airport checkpoints has climbed every year since 2010. Experts don’t think this is an epidemic of would-be hijackers - nearly everyone caught claims to have forgotten they had a gun with them - but they emphasize the danger even one gun can pose in the wrong hands on a plane or at a checkpoint.

North Korea fires 2 missiles in tests condemned by neighbors

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea east of the country Monday in its second test launch in three days, prompting Japan to request an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

The launches continue a tit-for-tat exchange that began Saturday, and follow a year in which North Korea launched more than 70 missiles, the most ever. Pyongyang has recently escalated nuclear threats and threatened an “unprecedentedly” strong response to annual U.S.-South Korea military drills, which it views as preparation for an invasion.

South Korea’s military said it detected two missile launches Monday morning from a town on North Korea’s west coast, which were later confirmed by North Korean official media. Japan said both missiles landed in waters outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone and that no damage to aircraft or vessels in the area was reported, but they flew distances that suggest most of South Korea is in range.

Trump absent as Iowa 2024 GOP caucus train begins to roll

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Nikki Haley is swinging through Iowa this week fresh off announcing her presidential campaign. Her fellow South Carolinian Republican, Sen. Tim Scott, will also be here as he decides his political future. And former Vice President Mike Pence was just in the state courting influential evangelical Christian activists.

After a slow start, Republican presidential prospects are streaming into the leadoff presidential caucus state. Notably absent from the lineup, at least for now, is former President Donald Trump.

Few of the White House hopefuls face the lofty expectations in Iowa that Trump does. He finished a competitive second to devout social conservative Ted Cruz in 2016, and went on to carry the state twice, by healthy margins, as the Republican presidential nominee in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

“It is genuinely impossible for this guy to try to manage these expectations. They are enormous. They are self-made,” said Luke Martz, a veteran Iowa Republican strategist who helped lead Mitt Romney’s 2012 Iowa caucus campaign. “I don’t see how anyone who is saying ‘I’m the guy’ can come in and even get even a second-place finish.”

Turmoil in courts on gun laws in wake of justices’ ruling

WASHINGTON - A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment is upending gun laws across the country, dividing judges and sowing confusion over what firearm restrictions can remain on the books.

The high court’s ruling that set new standards for evaluating gun laws left open many questions, experts say, resulting in an increasing number of conflicting decisions as lower court judges struggle to figure out how to apply it.

The Supreme Court’s so-called Bruen decision changed the test that lower courts had long used for evaluating challenges to firearm restrictions. Judges should no longer consider whether the law serves public interests like enhancing public safety, the justices said.

Under the Supreme Court’s new test, the government that wants to uphold a gun restriction must look back into history to show it is consistent with the country’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

- The Associated Press