The Sunday morning incident began when TSA screeners detected a loaded .22-caliber Magnum revolver in a carry-on bag being taken through the security check-point by passenger Richard Popkin, Reuters reports.

Teen girl: TSA stopped me because of gun-themed purse

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes "while an Atlanta police officer responding to the scene tried to clear the five 'snake' shot bullets – small game pellet ammunition – in the handgun, a shot went off, according to an Atlanta Police incident report obtained from Hartsfield officials."

"I was grazed by a pellet fragment on the left side of my face," the officer says in a report quoted by CNN. "However, there were no visible injuries," the officer adds in the report.

The weapon was said to be pointed down toward a screening table when it discharged, according to CNN .

As for Popkin, CNN quotes the police report as saying he initially intended to put the gun in his checked luggage but decided to remove it because he was afraid it would cause that bag to exceed his airline's weight limit.

Fox 5 TV of Atlanta reports that the 43-year-old Popkin "was transported to the Clayton County Jail" and now "faces a charge of carrying a concealed weapon."

The TSA says the Atlanta incident is just one of more than 1,100 so far this year in which firearms have been discovered at airport security checkpoints across the nation.

And the Atlanta incident comes exactly a week after another man was arrested after he forgot to remove his firearm from his checked luggage in Memphis.

The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reports 33-year-old Frederick Mallick of Texas forgot to remove a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson from his carry-on while going through screening at Memphis International last Sunday (Dec. 4).

The Commercial Appeal writes he "was arrested by airport police and landed in Shelby County Jail. He was charged with the misdemeanors of violating airport security and possessing a weapon in a prohibited place."

Frederick Mallick, Mallick's 70-year-old father, called for changes to the way authorities handle guns brought to security checkpoints.

"There needs to be another system in place in the way they are doing this," the Frederick Mallick says to the newspaper. "They'll take an innocent, what I call an innocent tourist or visitor that has got no criminal record at all -- certainly a good citizen, not a terrorist … They're taking them, booking them, putting them in jail, having to go before a magistrate, having to get a bond, just because they inadvertently forgot that they had this in there."

It was the 11th such incident at Memphis airport this year, a TSA spokesman says to the Commercial Appeal.

source: usatoday