House Democrats say it should be illegal for people to carry handguns into airports, even though they admit that law could leave people unprotected from “attacks by armed gunmen” that are happening increasingly in airports.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., reintroduced his “Airport Security Act” along with nine other Democratic lawmakers. His bill would make it illegal for most people to carry loaded guns onto airport property, and would only allow law enforcement officers to carry.
“Only law enforcement officials should be allowed to carry loaded weapons in the unsecured sections of our nation’s airports,” he said Tuesday. “Over time, we have seen evidence that our airports are increasingly vulnerable to small-scaled attacks by armed gunmen.”
That’s the kind of logic that conservative supporters of the Second Amendment have rejected. They have argued that creating gun-free zones, even in elementary schools, has left those zones more open to attack, and left the people in those zones unable to defend themselves.
Under Johnson’s bill, people who are traveling, picking up or dropping off people or cargo “may not be in possession of a firearm while on airport property.”
The bill would create requirements at the federal level that all states would have to follow. Currently, the Transportation Security Administration holds that when traveling, people should follow their local laws on firearms, which vary around the country.
TSA rules do hold that people flying with guns must declare each firearm, and that the weapons must be “unloaded and locked in a hard-sided container and transported as checked baggage only.”
