A Fort Washington man was arrested at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport on Tuesday after trying to pass through security with a loaded .38-caliber handgun in his carry-on bag, the Transportation Security Administration said Wednesday.
Another passenger was also stopped Tuesday in an unrelated incident at the airport after two loaded magazine clips — one with .38-caliber bullets and one with .45-caliber bullets — were found in his bag, the TSA said. He did not have a gun and was not arrested, but the magazine clips were confiscated.
The first man, Rodney Rudolph, 56, of the 9500 block of Fort Foote Road, was detained by TSA agents late Tuesday morning after the agents spotted the handgun "tucked inside" his carry-on bag as it passed along a conveyor belt, the TSA and Maryland Transportation Authority Police said.
Rudolph was ticketed to fly to Las Vegas, but was instead arrested by responding MdTA police about 11:42 a.m. and charged with having a handgun on his person and interfering with a security procedure, said 1st Sgt. Glend McGuire Jr., a MdTA spokesman.
Operations at the airport were not impacted, the TSA said. Rudolph could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
The handgun was the 13th gun confiscated at BWI so far this year. The same number of guns were confiscated at the airport in all of 2013, said Lisa Farbstein, a TSA spokeswoman.
In 2012, there were 19 guns stopped at BWI checkpoints, Farbstein said.
Before Tuesday, the most recent incident involved a St. Mary's County woman who was arrested Nov. 19 after a loaded .38-caliber pistol and more than a dozen "loose bullets" were found in her carry-on as she attempted to pass through BWI security.
Nationally, the TSA has detected more than 2,000 guns at airport checkpoints, a 10 percent increase from 2013, when they detected 1,813 guns, the TSA said.
Passengers are allowed to travel with guns as long as they are unloaded, properly stored and declared to the airline prior to passenger's passing through security.
Individual airlines may have their own requirements as well, the TSA said.
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