Firearms found at TSA checkpoints

As more books have been self-published, more firearms have been found at TSA checkpoints, a correlation of 0.979 that connects literary ambition to aviation security with the loaded confidence of a chart that treats Amazon KDP and the NICS database as equivalent measures of American self-expression. The manuscript uploads, the gun is confiscated, and both numbers climb because a growing, opinionated nation produces more of everything: more stories and more situations requiring an explanation to a federal officer.

Self-published books grew from about 150,000 to over 2 million per year. TSA firearm discoveries grew from about 2,200 to over 6,500. Both are ten-year growth curves: books because publishing barriers fell, guns because ownership expanded and travelers forgot what was in their bags. Both trends track a nation that is producing more personal property of all kinds and transporting it with varying degrees of awareness.

Ten years of self-published books and TSA gun finds is a correlation between two forms of American individualism: one expressing itself through manuscripts, the other forgetting to express itself by removing the firearm from the carry-on. The book publishes freely, the gun travels inadvertently, and the chart maps both with the checkpoint precision of a coefficient that has been through security.