Agents from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) intercepted an unusual “pen gun” during a security screening at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Saturday, the agency announced on Wednesday.
Boston.com reported:
This weekend, security at Logan Airport flagged a weapon no larger than a pen in a passenger’s carry-on luggage. The weapon, a .22 caliber single shot firearm, or pen knife firearm, was discovered during a routine screening of luggage Saturday afternoon.
The tiny weapon was not loaded, Lorie Dankers, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration, said in an email statement to Boston.com, and the passenger was destined for Portland International Airport in Oregon.
Once TSA agents saw the weapon on the x-ray screen, they notified the Massachusetts State Police, who responded to the checkpoint and interviewed the traveler, according to Dankers. The passenger was allowed to continue to his flight.
The successful interception of the tiny weapon comes just weeks before the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Two of the flights used in those attacks — American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 — departed from Logan and were hijacked by Al Qaeda terrorists, using box cutters, to attack the World Trade Center in New York, which was eventually destroyed.
Logan Airport includes a memorial to those flights, keeping them in the thoughts of passengers and security personnel alike.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.