According to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), in 2019, 4,432 firearms were found in carry-on luggage at airport security checkpoints. Dating back to 2014, that number jumps to more than 20,000 firearms and new research strongly suggests that number could actually have been even higher, as even more firearms may not have been detected. 

For this episode I am joined by Sheldon Jacobson from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose research in the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, “Using Risk-based Security to Quantify the Number of Firearms Missed at Airport Security Checkpoints,” looks not only at the increased number of firearms found at security checkpoints over the past few years, but at the reasons behind this increase.