It was the art of the conceal.
Despite TSA’s best efforts to prevent flyers from smuggling bizarre items in their carry-on luggage, there will always be a deluge of travelers who think they are immune to the rules.
Airports might have recently tightened security measures with the Real ID requirement and a biometric facial scanning technology to make the screening process more secure, but last year, officers still witnessed travelers attempting to sneak everything from BB guns to ninja weapons through TSA checkpoints.
And the lengths — and lies — travelers will go to conceal these forbidden items are baffling.
“I think that’s what shakes things up a bit when you’re seeing not just the passenger having something in a bag, but they are really deliberately doing a lot of work to hide things,” Gabrielle Connor-Findley, a TSA officer based out of Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), told The Post. “I think that’s what makes it more interesting and the fact that we can actually find it more challenging.”
As a warning to prospective smugglers, The Post rounded up some of the most bizarre items passengers have attempted to sneak into airports around the country in 2025, but got caught, according to the TSA.
Killing me softly with his song?
In October of last year, at EWR, a TSA officer discovered a handgun hidden in a guitar case like something out of the 1995 action flick “Desperado.”
“Clearly the officers are paying really good attention and yeah, I’m super proud of that,” Connor-Findley told The Post. “We are very well trained, we are really alert, and we care on top of [it] all.”
When confronted by the Port Authority Police over his “instrument of destruction,” the unnamed passenger said he wasn’t aware of the firearm’s presence.
“He said that the guitar case was a gift from someone else,” Connor-Findley recalled. “He had no idea that it was in there, which is something that we hear.”
A real shoot-case
Speaking of surreptitious gun-running schemes, in late June, an EWR TSA officer identified a high-threat item during an X-ray screening and flagged it to the Port Authority Police.
A subsequent bag exam revealed that the item was a concealed BB gun that had been cleverly hidden in the lining of the flyer’s luggage.
Death star
Guns seem to be one of the most common items stopped at TSA. Something that’s not as common? Ninja weapons.
In December, throwing stars, which are small, metal blades, often with 3-8 points, were detected at EWR Terminal A — a discovery that Connor-Findley described as “very odd.”
“It’s just not something that you see,” she told The Post. “You’re going to take a double, triple look. You’re like, ‘Is this what I think it is?’”
A shocking find
A TSA officer at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) was “stunned” after busting a passenger attempting to sneak an artfully concealed flashlight taser through security in mid-September.
Police confirmed that the item was indeed a surreptitious stun gun, whereupon it was surrendered to the TSA for disposal.
Connor-Findley said catching such a weapon on an X-ray is “hard” as someone is “deliberately hiding something within either something else or you are making it look like something that’s ordinary.”
“That officer was pretty sharp,” she revealed.
It was a real sharp look
Some confiscated items resembled something out of a KGB spy movie. In July, an officer at BWI detected an incognito knife hidden in a belt buckle.
The Maryland Transportation Authority Police responded and conducted the search and the passenger handed the item over to the TSA to dispose.
A real haircutter
Flyers aren’t the only ones attempting to bring undetected weapons through the airport. An EWR employee was busted with a money-themed comb knife in Terminal B, after which they were arrested.
Connor-Findley told The Post that this bust illustrated the lack of bias in the TSA security system, declaring, “They’re not letting anything past them just because it’s an employee.”
Flight capsules?
Guns and knives weren’t the only head-scratching items flagged by TSA. In December, a BWI TSA officer spotted drugs that a passenger had hidden in a paper towel inside their shoe.
They alerted Maryland Transportation Authority Police, who conducted a search and seizure.
A case of mistaken IED-entity
A TSA confiscated items list wouldn’t be complete without some epic false alarms.
In October at EWR Terminal A, TSA agents spotted a “bomb” that actually turned out to be a Montessori Children’s Switch Board Toy.
However, its smorgasbord of buttons and wires made it resemble an assembled improvised explosive device (IED) and prompted a response from law enforcement, including an explosive specialist.
These cases of mistaken identity occur more than one might think.
“You have certain toys where just the makeup of it in the bag…sometimes it’s just the proximity to something else in the bag….can really distort things,” said Connor-Findley.
“We definitely come across household items, lots of different items that look like other things,” the TSA officer added. “But it’s great for everyone getting on that flight that it was just a box of cereal.”
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