More flight attendants than ever are signing up for self-defense classes. That’s good because the TSA is also finding more guns than ever at checkpoints.

The Department of Homeland Security has offered self-defense classes at its office near DFW Airport since 2018, but I asked the Federal Air Marshal Special Agent in Charge if more flight attendants and crew members were signing up since society was discontinued.

The special agent in charge explained they weren’t turning flight attendants into President James Marshall or even Ted Striker.

The flight attendants found this acceptable.

Making the story about myself, I explained to another flight attendant I had just been on a plane a few days ago, and the flight attendants couldn’t have been more accommodating. They seemed legitimately happy to be there even though I can’t imagine that was true.

At the risk of editorializing, people are a bit more volatile now!

But that begs the question: Why don’t air marshals just hop to a flight attendant’s defense? I asked the special agent in charge.

So in the Air Force One situation, Harrison Ford had to intervene at just the right time.

An aside: We were asked not to shoot pictures of the air marshals’ faces. Even as a guy who works with audio, look how strong I am at skulking around a room to point my phone at things from an acceptable angle!

“I’d like to learn more,” I declared and headed to DFW Airport.

There, TSA had set out a table for people to observe things that have been confiscated at security checkpoints. This is already a record-setting year for guns! Through the end of last week, TSA had caught 248 guns at DFW.

Sure, last year, they only found 211 guns the entire year because we all stayed home, but even in 2019, TSA only found a total of 245 guns.

I mentioned an associate back in Ohio who I’m almost positive would forget she keeps a gun in her purse. The officer I was talking to explained that does happen a lot, so maybe double check before you leave home to make sure you don’t have a gun squirreled away.

But TSA is understanding. They don’t treat every forbidden item the same.

Also make sure you don’t have a tortilla iron squirreled away. At the TSA’s display of things they’ve confiscated were all the fixin’s for a solid party:

Another aside: The associate from Ohio with the gun in her purse would also quite happily help herself to a drink and then get out the rolling pin and do some bakin’, so I wonder if she’s recently flown through DFW.

But let’s say you’re packing for a tortilla party in Minneapolis. You can still bring your tortilla iron and gun with you [to fire celebratory shots in the air when you win the coveted “Flour” division], you just need to put them in your checked luggage. A TSA agent explained the airline will put a note with the locked case saying you had declared it.

I started bringing tamales home for Christmas a few years ago. It’s possible the Scaia clan, with a bunch of Italians and Eastern Europeans, was not familiar with the tradition of Christmas tamales. I always check my tamales, but TSA says the holidays are a period where there are more novice travelers, so folks might check out their website before they try to bring TexMex parties to Ohio.