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Taking Sense Away: Confessions of a Former TSA Screener
OverTheGeicoE writes "TSA gets discussed on Slashdot from time to time, usually negatively. Have you ever wondered about the TSA screeners' perspective? Taking Sense Away is a blog, allegedly written by a former TSA screener, offering insider perspectives on TSA topics. For example, there's the Insider's TSA Dictionary, whose entries are frequently about the code screeners use to discuss attractive female passengers (like 'Code Red,' 'Fanny Pack,' and 'Hotel Bravo'). Another posting explains what goes on in private screening rooms, which the author claims is nothing compared to screener conduct in backscatter image operator rooms. Apparently what happens in the IO room stays in the IO room. Today's posting covers how TSA employees feel about working for 'a despised agency'. For many the answer is that they hate working for 'the laughing stock of America's security apparatus,' try to hide that they work for TSA, and want to transfer almost anywhere else ASAP."
The reasonable question I would ask is "What is the complete impact of stricter gun laws on crime."
Glad to oblige! Here's a scientific study done by the Australian government to determine the result of the crackdown on firearms possession post-Port Arthur massacre. It's got numbers in it, and the statistical determination is all well laid out for you.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704353/
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
According to wikipedia, the rate of homicide in the US is 4.2/100k people and the rate of gun related homicide is 3.7/100k people. Therefor, 89%ish of US homicides are gun related homicides.
Contrast this with the UK, which has 1.2/100k homicides and 0.04/100k gun related homicides, or 3.3% of homicides are gun related.
Another way to look at this would be to consider the guns per gun related homicide numbers. In the US, there are approximated 89k guns per 100k people, giving a guns per gun-homicide ratio of 24k guns per gun-homicide. Serbia, the #2 country for guns per capita has approximately 58k guns per 100k people, giving them a guns per gun-homicide rate of 93k guns per gun-homicide.
Clearly, in the states we're all about shooting each other, even in comparison to other nations with (roughly, since no one can claim truly similar) similar rates of gun ownership. Put another way, in the US, we have more gun related homicides per capita (by a factor of 4 almost) than most developed countries have in TOTAL homicides.
Full disclosure: I fully suspect that if guns were outlawed here in the US, we would see an alarming rise in knife related crime. I personally think that everyone here is so willing to kill each other because we have so little vacation time. Damned Protestant work ethic!
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country