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TSA found over 6,600 guns at airports last year; most were loaded<\/p>\n
Most of the firearms were found at checkpoints in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.<\/p>\n
Scripps News<\/p>\n
Some international travelers and former U.S. residents are avoiding or minimizing travel to the United States due to gun violence concerns.Several countries, including Canada and Australia, have issued travel advisories for their citizens regarding the risk of gun violence in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Christina Kooi left America because of gun violence. The 38-year-old, who was born in the Netherlands and moved to the United States when she was 10, ultimately left the country in 2017 amid ongoing school shootings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could not picture myself having kids and sending them to school in the U.S.,\u201d she told USA TODAY. She traveled internationally before relocating back to the Dutch country. She makes yearly trips to visit her parents in Ohio, but is wary of spending too much time stateside.<\/p>\n
Now with two young children (2 and 4), the large number of firearms is a concern. \u201cFor me to move back to the U.S., or to be there for an extended period of time, I would just be afraid to be at someone’s home and have my kid grab a handgun out of a well-meaning neighbor\u2019s bedside table,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ohio\u2019s gun laws \u2013 which allow permitless concealed carry<\/a> \u2013 also give her pause. \u201cI don’t like knowing that somebody I entered the Target with or the Walmart with happens to have a gun in (their) pocket,\u201d she said. Her Romanian husband feels similarly, she added.<\/p>\n Kooi is not the only one. Some travelers are minimizing time spent in the United States or avoiding it altogether due to gun violence and other safety fears. Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s scary for us\u2019<\/p>\n Cheryl Jessamine and her partner planned to take an RV trip down the coast of Oregon in May, but after President Donald Trump<\/a> won the 2024 election, they canceled. The Alberta, Canada, pair was concerned for their safety as a same-sex couple with the federal government targeting the LGBTQ+ community<\/a>, and reports of tourists being detained by immigration officers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gun violence was another factor. \u201cIt’s scary for us,\u201d Jessamine, 58, said. \u201cI\u2019m not saying it doesn’t happen here either, but it seems to be at least more (U.S. gun violence) discussed in the media.\u201d<\/p>\n Data from the National Travel and Tourism Office shows about a 1.8 million drop<\/a> in visitors from Canada in the first half of the year compared to 2024. The drop was fueled, in part, by escalating political tensions <\/a>between the United States and Canada.<\/p>\n In September alone, the United States has seen multiple high-profile shootings, with the murder of conservative activist<\/a> Charlie Kirk in Utah and a school shooting<\/a> in Colorado taking place on the same day.<\/p>\n Those reinforced Jessamine\u2019s feelings. \u201cIt didn’t help your cause, (I\u2019ll) put it that way,\u201d she said. \u201cIt didn’t help us want to cross the border again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n They took a September trip to Mexico for their daughter\u2019s 30th birthday. \u201cOriginally she wanted to go to New York City, and we’re like, we just can’t,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Are tourists avoiding the U.S.?<\/p>\n Tourism Economics, which provides industry research, initially expected 10% growth this year. Their revised forecast now puts that figure at an 8.2% fall. Their July report attributes the declining trend to a mix of policies and rhetoric from the Trump administration that has altered how potential travelers perceive coming.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think it reminds us that we need to be sensitive to it and that travelers have choices,\u201d said Aran Ryan, Tourism Economics Director of Industry Studies. \u201cMaking them concerned about where they’re going can cause them to shift elsewhere \u2013 so I think we need to be generally more stable as a destination.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n International arrivals to the United States were down 3% year over year as of June, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office<\/a>. Overseas arrivals alone were down 1.2%.<\/p>\n According to the Tourism Economics report, the decrease in international visitors will be felt the most in some of the cities close to the northern border. Seattle tops that list with a 26.9% expected decline from 2024 \u2013 with nearly all of that attributed to Canadian visits.\u00a0<\/p>\n Data on international visitor sentiment around gun violence specifically is scarce. However, a 2024 survey of 6,000 travelers in Southeast Asia found that more than 90% said the prevalence of guns in America influenced their decision to visit.<\/p>\n \u201cYet, 56% of those in the survey, commissioned by CNBC Travel and conducted by the market research firm Milieu Insight, said they are likely to visit the United States in the next few years,\u201d the outlet reported<\/a>. Among respondents who had previously visited the country, \u201c74% said they perceive gun violence to be a bigger issue in the United States today than in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. Travel Association told USA TODAY that regional analysis of visits from overseas “shows few notable outliers, with most major regions outside North America tracking within a few percentage points of last year\u2019s volumes.”<\/p>\n How common are shootings in the U.S.?<\/p>\n There have been 302 mass shootings in the United States so far in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive<\/a>. The organization defines a mass shooting as one that involves four or more people shot or killed, excluding the shooter. There were 503 in 2024, representing a decrease from 659 the year prior, but still significantly higher than the 332 in 2015.<\/p>\n A 2021 analysis<\/a> by the University of Washington\u2019s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation also found that the United States had relatively high levels of gun violence compared to other high-income countries, with a firearm homicide rate of 4.5 per 100,000 people. That number was 0.6 in Canada, by contrast, and 0.2 in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n Other countries have also warned of gun violence in U.S. travel guidance for their citizens.<\/p>\n \u201cIncidences of mass shootings occur, resulting most often in casualties,\u201d Canada said on its website<\/a>, for example. \u201cAlthough tourists are rarely involved, there is a risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.\u201d<\/p>\n Others, such as Australia<\/a> and the U.K.<\/a>, similarly mention \u201cgun crime\u201d in their U.S. travel advice.<\/p>\n Kooi and her family are planning to take nearly a month off to travel by camper van next summer. Her dream has been to travel through states like Arizona and Nevada in the Western United States, but her husband \u201cis really uncomfortable and feels it\u2019s unsafe,\u201d she said. They\u2019re going to Portugal and Spain instead.<\/p>\n For Jessamine and her family, a possible trip to Alaska is also up in the air.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess we don’t want to spend our travel dollars in the United States right now, just for \u2013 how we perceive what is important to people in the U.S. is not necessarily aligning with who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n Contributing: Eve Chen<\/p>\n (This story was updated to refresh headlines and clarify information.)<\/p>\n Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TSA found over 6,600 guns at airports last year; most were loaded Most of the firearms were found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[3045,182,23,103,100340,49204,14804,12,13710,55878,55881,32061,7922,10719,91910,13545,13558,34645,3,13470,34647,29311,29319,13546,13717,29312,2427,3479,13692,21,19,22,20,25,24,16757,27604,4369,3439],"class_list":["post-166549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-abuse","tag-ai","tag-america","tag-canada","tag-charlie","tag-charlie-kirk","tag-donald","tag-donald-trump","tag-enabled","tag-firearms","tag-firearms-u0026-weapons","tag-gun","tag-gun-violence","tag-highlights","tag-kirk","tag-modular","tag-modular-story","tag-negative","tag-news","tag-overall","tag-overall-negative","tag-sensitive","tag-sensitive-subjects","tag-story","tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled","tag-subjects","tag-travel","tag-trump","tag-u0026","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-violence-u0026-abuse","tag-walmart","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}