
LAX police run into this problem–of passengers forgetting they have guns in their carry-on luggage–regularly, Holcomb said. Most of the roughly 10 incidents a month involve police officers traveling as civilians.
“People don’t get it,” Holcomb said. “When you go to an airport, the only people that can carry a gun are federal agents.”
That’s not to say high-profile travelers haven’t tried to board with weapons.
Rapper Snoop Dogg pleaded guilty in 2007 after screeners at John Wayne Airport in Orange County found a collapsible baton in his luggage. Although the rapper said it was a prop for a music video, authorities deemed it otherwise.
David Huckabee, son of former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, received a one-year suspended sentence last year after he was caught at a Little Rock, Ark. airport with a loaded Glock pistol in his bag.
“It was a silly mistake,” he said at the time.
And the lead singer of the rock band Incubus, Brandon Boyd, was arrested in 2004 for carrying a switchblade in his bag while trying to board a plane at New York’s La Guardia International Airport.
