The disgraced former Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn has pleaded guilty to trying to take a loaded handgun through a TSA checkpoint at Charlotte Douglas International Airport last April.

According to Cawthorn’s attorney, the controversial GOP lawmaker entered a guilty plea on Friday to a charge of possession of a dangerous weapon on city property, a third-degree misdemeanour which carries a maximum possible sentence of 30 days imprisonment.

Cawthorn, however, escaped jail and was fined a mere $250. His firearm, a loaded Staccato C2 handgun which the TSA confiscated, will also be returned, his attorney said.

TSA agents stopped Cawthorn as he tried to get through a security checkpoint on April 26, 2022. It’s the second time Cawthorn has been busted bringing a handgun to a TSA checkpoint after he was previously stopped with a 9mm handgun in February 2021.

In a statement, Cawthorn’s attorney said his client had “accepted responsibility for this mistake. Law enforcement noted his cooperative attitude at every step.”

“He chose to resolve this case in a manner that would ensure this uninterrupted right to possess a firearm,” the statement continued. “He remains staunchly committed to responsible gun ownership”.

Cawthorn shot to fame in 2021 when he was elected to represent North Carolina’s 11th district at just 26 years old.  He was the youngest member of Congress since Jed Johnson Jr and the first to have been born in the 1990s but he failed to win a second term after losing the Republican primary to Chuck Edwards.

Cawthorn, who was paralysed from the waist down following a car accident in Florida in 2014, regards himself as a conservative Christian. He angered GOP colleagues by suggesting Republican lawmakers had invited him to sex orgies.

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