"This year, TSA officers have stopped more than 5,600 firearms at checkpoints - a 20-year record - ensuring they didn’t make it into the airport’s secure area and the passenger cabin of aircraft," Velez said Monday.
Over 85 percent of firearms were loaded, he added.
More than 1,000 firearms have been confiscated in the US airports in last 2 months, according to TSA statistics.
The previous record had been registered in 2019, when TSA agents caught at airport checkpoints almost 4,500 firearms.