Traveler stuffs gun frame in boot, hides other parts in box of Legos, TSA says

A traveler caught trying to sneak a gun — well, pieces of one — onto a New Jersey flight has been charged, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

The Mississippi man stuffed the gun frame in the bottom of a boot and hid other parts of the weapon in a box of Legos stashed in his carry-on bag, the agency said in an Oct. 17 news release.

Though “artfully concealed,” agents spotted the disassembled 9mm handgun Wednesday, Oct. 16, at a security checkpoint at the Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.

Agents said the man jammed a sock behind the gun frame hidden inside his boot.

“The gun’s slide, spring and gun magazine loaded with 12 bullets were detected mixed among the plastic pieces of a Black Panther LEGO set,” officials said.

The traveler, who wasn’t named, was headed to Atlanta, authorities said.

“He kept changing his story, first telling us that it was a toy gun and then claiming that it belonged to his brother,” Thomas Carter, the TSA’s federal security director for New Jersey, said in the release.

“Regardless of his claims, what I can tell you is that it was a fully disassembled firearm that he could easily have assembled and used on a plane,” Carter said.

TSA agents alerted the Port Authority Police, who arrested the man and confiscated his things, the federal agency said.

He faces criminal charges and a civil fine that “is likely to set him back several thousands of dollars,” Carter said in the release.

Passengers can travel with a firearm, but the weapon must be “unloaded, packed in a locked, hard-sided case and declared to the airline” before boarding, according to TSA.

Guns are stored with checked bags in the belly of the aircraft.

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