On Sunday (Jan. 13), TSA confirmed that a passenger was able to slip a gun through the Delta Airlines checkpoint at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport onto an international flight heading to Tokyo, Japan. When this mistake was made public, many felt as though it was a result of the ongoing partial government shut down. However, despite workers calling off work at alarming rates and complaints regarding missing wages, the agency has concluded that this mistake was a result of failed procedures and not the lack of employees after a thorough investigation.
"TSA has determined standard procedures were not followed, and a passenger did in fact pass through a standard screening TSA checkpoint with a firearm at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on the morning of January 3," the Transportation Security Administration said in a press release, accompanied with tweets confirming that reports that the government shutdown affected this incident are false.
Despite President Trump's plan to continue this stalemate for as long as he deems necessary, one can assume that this shutdown will eventually begin to affect the country's safety.
