Firearms found at TSA checkpoints

As NFL players have earned more money, more Americans have attempted to bring firearms through airport security, a correlation that connects professional athletics to aviation security with the confident absurdity of a trend line that has no idea what it is drawing. The coefficient is 0.952 across fifteen years, which is strong enough to make a TSA agent wonder whether they should be screening for fantasy football apps. The guns are real, the correlation is not, and the NFL continues to play on Sundays regardless.

NFL salaries grew from about 1.7 million average in 2009 to over 3.7 million by 2023, driven by television deals worth over 100 billion dollars. TSA firearm discoveries grew from about 976 in 2009 to over 6,500 by 2023, driven by record-setting gun sales (the US added roughly 60 million new gun owners between 2009 and 2023), expanded concealed carry permits in more states, and the simple mathematics of more guns in more bags going through more checkpoints as air travel recovered post-pandemic. Both trends track the same underlying variable: a growing, wealthier, more mobile American population that spends more on entertainment and owns more firearms, because the economy enables both without requiring a choice between them.

Fifteen years of NFL salaries and TSA gun finds climbing together is a distinctly American correlation—one that could not exist in any other country and probably should not exist in this one. Both trends are measuring the same affluent, mobile, consumption-driven society from two very different angles. The quarterback earns millions, the passenger forgets what's in their bag, and the data draws a line between them that means nothing and says everything.