The TSA and firearms

People are returning to the skies. And as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) scans more travelers, it’s also detecting more firearms at security checkpoints. New numbers from the TSA show that in the first six months of 2022, the administration seized more than half the number of firearms it confiscated in 2021.

• TSA officers prevented people from bringing more than 3,000 firearms onto planes from January to June, an average of 17 daily.
   
• Last year, the TSA seized 5,972 firearms at airport security checkpoints. Total guns seized in 2021 were 35% higher than in 2019.
   
• Approximately 86% of firearms seized in 2021 were loaded.
   
• Passengers may travel with unloaded firearms if they have a concealed weapon permit, but they must store them in their checked baggage. TSA officers can confiscate firearms if passengers bring them in carry-on luggage, on their person, or if it is loaded.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, Dallas Forth Worth International, and Houston's George Bush Intercontinental were the top three airports for confiscating firearms in 2021. What airports rounded out the top 10? Find out in this article.


State prisons by the numbers

State governments spent a combined $55 billion on corrections in 2020, mostly on operating state-run prisons. USAFacts has a snapshot of state-run prison data, including incarceration rates, correctional officer pay, and more. 

• States spent an average of $45,771 per prisoner in 2020. Per-prisoner spending varied from about $18,000 in Mississippi to $135,978 in Wyoming.  

• Correctional officer salaries tend to track with all worker wages statewide. Officers in high-wage states, including California, New York, and Massachusetts, make double the salaries of officers in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Georgia.
   
• The prison incarceration rate (the number of prisoners per 100,000 state residents) is highest in Alaska, with 625 prisoners per 100,000 residents. Mississippi has the second-highest rate: 594 prisoners per 100,000. There were 1.2 million people in prisons overall in 2020.
   
• Regionally, the South has the nation’s highest prison incarceration rate: 424 prisoners per 100,000 residents. The Northeast has the lowest rate at 185 prisoners per 100,000 residents.

• Out of those investigations, more than 618,000 children were found to be victims of abuse or neglect. More than 77% of the perpetrators of the abuse were parents of the victims. Legal guardians and foster parents were not considered parents in this data.

• Approximately 1,750 children nationwide died from abuse or neglect in 2020, down 5% in 2019. Almost half of these children were less than 1 year old.
   
• More than half of child abuse and neglect victims in Florida, Tennessee, and Washington had already been seen by state child protective service agencies at least once. In Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Minnesota, 99% were first-time victims.
   
• Pennsylvania also had the lowest victimization rate: 1.7 per 1,000 children. Maine had the nation’s highest, 19 per 1,000.

Not all abuse or neglect incidents are reported to the proper authorities, so the data potentially underrepresents the number of victims. Similarly, if a state doesn’t have enough social workers to support claims, that can also affect the number of reported abuse cases. See the state ratios of social workers to children at USAFacts.

Data behind the news

Floridians, South Carolinians, and others are coping with the deaths and flood damage brought by Hurricane Ian. The country won’t know the final costs of this storm for some time. However, here are the states that have been hardest hit by flooding up through 2021. USAFacts also has information on how the government predicts hurricanes. 


One last fact