Airports & Firearms

As this site and others note, certain airports are more likely to see guns confiscated. You have to wonder what the hell people are thinking, trying to carry a gun on a flight, but let's set that aside for a moment. As you can tell from the list on the site, southern airports dominate when it comes to trying to get a gun on an airline.

But ... some airports are busier than others and, therefore, might have more gun confiscations simply because they're busy. To do this, I ran the data on ranking airports on their traffic to see if, for example, Atlanta's Hartsfield airport is #2 simply because it's a damn busy airport. Below are the Top 10 on guns and the rank, if available and in the Top 25, on traffic. So some, like Dallas and Atlanta, are near the top in part because of the sheer traffic they get. Others, such as Houston's Hobby (which I just flew out of), Tampa, Nashville, and Ft. Lauderdale, clearly are lower traffic airports that are overrepresented on the gun list.

Rank on Guns	Rank on Traffic
1. Dallas/Fort Worth	3
2. Atlanta	2
3. Phoenix	11
4. Bush Intl (Houston)	8
5. Denver	5
6. Hobby (Houston)	NR
7. Tampa	31
8. Ft. Lauderdale (Fla)	25
9. Nashville	NR
10. Orlando	1

LAX is #4 on traffic but doesn't make the gun list. Give credit to Denver, which finished #5 on both lists. Reliable, if nothing else. Interesting that Charlotte, also in the South, is #6 on traffic but doesn't make the gun list Top 10.