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TSA Union Calls For Armed Guards At Every Checkpoint
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Brian Tumulty writes at USA Today that the union representing airport screeners for the Transportation Security Administration says Friday's fatal shooting of an agent at Los Angeles International Airport highlights the need for armed security officers at every airport checkpoint. The screeners, who earn up to $30,000 annually, have not requested to carry guns themselves, but they do want an armed security officer present at every checkpoint says J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents the screeners. "Every local airport has its own security arrangement with local police to some type of contract security force," says Cox. "There is no standardization throughout the country. Every airport operates differently. Obviously at L.A. there were a fair number of local police officers there." Congress may investigate the issue but Sen. Tom Carper, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, says that "there will be an appropriate time — after all the facts have been gathered and thoughtfully analyzed —to review existing policy and procedure to see what, if anything, can be learned from this unfortunate incident to help prevent future tragedies." TSA officials say that they don't anticipate a change in the agency security posture at the moment, but "passengers may see an increased presence of local law enforcement officers throughout the country.""
fuck you, TSA. This is not the answer.
There are already armed cops (real cops, not TSA thugs) at every security checkpoint I've been to except one particular small airport, where he was in the lobby since there was no room, or nead, between the xray and the airplane.
The only way to professionalize (the Presecurity Checkpoint Security Agents) is to federalize.
In five years, expect to have the Pre-presecurity checkpoint and those new federal employees.
I think this is a good idea. If/when future similar incidents occur, all those that are NOT carrying a firearm will be secondary targets. The poor guy who's carrying is just going to be the first guy shot, giving everyone else a slight chance to duck and hide.
Let's give guns to a bunch of untrained overpaid mouthbreathers with power trip issues!
What could go wrong with that!
If they do this... I give it 6 months till the TSA 'guard' shoots some kid for pretty much no reason.
"Excellent" idea. In next installment they'll rename into "Civil Protection" or "Metrocops". HL2 becomes reality at least in this dystopian way.
This doesn't solve any problem, and instead only gives the TSA more power. Do you really want ARMED TSA agents there to intimidate people more than the run-of-the-mill TSA goons do now?
...armed gunman opens fire on unarmed targets, and the logical response is to request that his targets be allowed to arm themselves to fend off future attacks of a similar nature. Remind me again why it's practically impossible for me to purchase a handgun to defend myself in California?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The solution is obviously... more guns.
Maybe reexamine the way mental illness is treated and use the money improve.
Maybe the TSA should just kill every passenger right away as a preventive measure. That would be a logical extension of current policy and it might even be more humane.
Just get rid of the TSA.
is the enemy.
There would be fewer TSA targets if the TSA was disbanded.
Umm, doubt it. Until every person entering an airport has their own personal guard assigned to them, and frisks their victim - I mean, passenger - down before entry, no one will be 100% safe. Maybe not even then - who knows how stable that armed guard is? TSA has gotten just a little too self-important, particularly when you stop to consider just how ineffective they are.
Not only do we not need TSA to be armed, we also need to disarm police everywhere. I'm tired of innocent people being murdered by yet another trigger happy cop.
Yeah, all those armed guards at the post office really stopped all the shootings there. Oh wait, that didn't happen. Derp.
No thanks.
--- rapper/producer/bachelorette party stripper
So if there's a mall shooting the solution is armed guards in every mall? If there's a school shooting the solution is armed guards in every school? Every bus station, train station, subway station, park and so on until there's a whole army of armed guards running around? The point of the secuity control is that nobody gets to bring anything on board to crash or hijack the plane and in that respect, mission accomplished. It's not a general defense against a random person pulling out a gun and opening fire, not any more than any other place.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
In order to protect the TSA agents, the TSA should be disbanded. You can't shoot what's not there!
--- rapper/producer/bachelorette party stripper
TSA has been looking for an excuse to arm it's people. Watch them try to turn this incident into that excuse. Mind you, arming ex-hamburger flippers will endanger the public more than protect it, but arming TSA goons would be a huge step in proper bureaucratic empire building.
Want protection from nutcases? Sorry, that's not gonna happen - in a nation of more than 300 million people, there will always be nutcases.
Want to reduce the target-rich environment that is the TSA checkpoint? That's easy, get rid of TSA and let the airports and airlines deal with security.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
What they need to do is fix the real issues with check points. Get rid of the security theater, the 3.4 oz fluid limits, the shoes removals, the body scanners, the biggest of all being the understaffing of the checkpoints that allow the mass lines that would attract a terrorist to begin with and so on. Start training the TSA on real security measures and start teach training them on profiling. When's the last time you heard about an Isreali plane being hijacked - and they let you bring a pocket-knife on board?
The problem with the TSA isn't the members of the TSA, they are doing what they are trained to do. The problem is that Congress is overseeing the TSA and allowing politics to trump security. It's like getting mad at the IRS when the IRS is only doing what congress told them to do. Get mad at congress for giving them the byzantine rules to begin with.
The TSA should be staffed by real armed Federal Officers, with real training, and real skills. Start by phasing in the replacement of the current supervisors with real officers and work your way from there. The next thing they should do is follow the Federal Reserve model and make the TSA semi-independent from regular politics so that they can focus more on security and less on politics.
The day the color codes, shoes removals, 3.4 oz removals and similar useless rules go and get replaced by having the (usually unmanned) additional screening checkpoints getting opened up is the day you know the TSA has finally started to get security.
You know, where the iconic mark of the Eastern Bloc was armed security guards everywhere.
I can't wait to see all the negligent discharges that will occur. Unfortunately the fat, child molesting, unqualified meter maids will take out a small child. None of them are LEO qualified much less allowed to look weapons and touch people.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Wait until you arm them. Now 6 year old kids can watch their mothers get guns pointed in their faces while being groped.
The TSA has not demonstrated why it should remain in existence. In fact it has demonstrated it has no place in a free society.
Its record on stopping real dangers is non-existent
Its attitude towards people's basic rights indicate that it believes it does not have to comply with the 1st and 4th amendments.
It is a sink hole for taxpayer dollars with nothing to show for it.
The bottom line is that as far as its record goes it has little if any redeeming value.
If the LAX shooter had been interested in mowing down passengers instead of TSA agents, then armed guards at the TSA checkpoints would have done nothing to protect those passengers. At LAX in places like Terminal 3, the lines to the security checkpoints can flow out of the building and onto the sidewalk creating a massive concentration of terrorist targets. Protecting them 100% with armed guards would require 10 times the number of agents that are currently employed. Providing armed guards at the checkpoints themselves only protects those around the checkpoints i.e. the TSA agents themselves.
If anything the best way to protect the passengers is to process them from the street and into the secured terminal at a faster pace, which would require a huge increase in TSA checkpoints. This is an inherently parallelizable task, but would require money to be spent. But terminals in places such as LAX aren't designed for such parallel operations. Using Terminal 3 as an example, you enter from street level then go up a flight of stairs/escalator, following an S-shaped path that snakes around back on itself before arriving at the security checkpoint. Once there, there is only enough room for 2 or 3 parallel operations at once.
BTW last time I was flying out of Orlando I encountered a private company that would sell you the ability to jump to the front of the TSA queue. So instead of building out the infrastructure to better accommodate the passengers in light of having to go through the TSA, the airport grants a license to this company to exploit the frustrations and $$ of the people in the queue. (Which is turn pisses off the other passengers who experience smug people pushing in front of them in the queue and highlighting of how class based US society is).
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
When you treat everyone as a criminal, you shouldn't be surprised when something like this happens.
And now that it has happened, you can justify using even more force/hiring more people.
It's a wonderfully self-fulfilling prophecy
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
...we even have a video game for it called Papers please!. Get it from steam to preview how your TSA screenings will be in the near future.
Not a bear in sight.
The screeners, who earn up to $30,000 annually
And note that it says *UP TO* $30,000 annually. Looks like this particular security theater pays their actors about the same as the night shift at my local McDonalds. Probably explains why they look like the same crowd.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
People are getting killed, killed by drivers driving over red lights into crossing traffic. If we had a guy with a bazooko at every traffic light, he could take out those cars which are obviously not going to stop in time otherwise.
This is going to make the roads so much safer.
Can I get a patent on it?
Now we'll have not only people with low IQ skills checking people in, who, in a lot of places are "wannabe" police, have been picked on because of who knows what, that will be given FIREARMS (hopefully with a LOT of training, and psych exams first!). First time someone gets out of hand, instead of one looney firing off a weapon, we'll have lead flying all over the place. The TSA groping people is bad enough, but this just gives me one more reason not to fly.
back around 1990 there WAS a mass shooting in the food court of the mall across the street from my office (Perimeter Mall in suburban Atlanta). forget the exact casualty count but there were multiple victims, it was sad but people realized it was an unfortunate isolated incident/not the first wave of an invasion & life went back to normal pretty quickly. I'd bet you a fairly expensive dinner you could take a poll of patrons there now & less than 5% would even know this incident ever happened...
soooo... shooting happened, people grieved for a few days & nearly 1/4 century later few people even remember it (I probably wouldn't if I didn't work with people who were there) and there have been exactly ZERO recurrences despite the conspicuous absence of a bear patrol - go figure...
I whole heartedly condemn the shooter, both in principle as well as pragmatically b/c people are already seizing the opportunity to tar anyone w/legitimate criticisms of tsa w/same brush as the shooter ("you're just an anti-govt nut!!!"). I wouldn't have thought it possible but this incident is a significant setback for any hope of meaningful reform...
After hearing of the guy who was left alone because he wasn't working for the TSA, it seemed like this guy wasn't just out for a killing spree or some anti-government nut job, but had a very specific reason to hate the TSA.
I can't help but wonder if he was molested as a child and the TSA's enhanced screening procedures set him off. The TSA's official training materials specifically give tips on how to handle young children. It's interesting to contrast it with the training given to parents who participate in cub/boy scout events, so they know how to recognize inappropriate behavior and potential risks from pervs. Having done the scout training first and seen some of the TSA materials after, it really stands out as a how-to program for pedophiles.
Duh! The whole point of the TSA screeners is that they should face life-threatening danger. A bomb is life threatening and dangerous. A bomb that explodes is worse. If TSA screeners aren't going to be putting themselves in life-threatening situations they have no business being there at all. Come to think of it, just the last part.
problems, personal, social, and scientific.
Maybe reexamine the way mental illness is treated and use the money improve.
I agree, but this guy wasn't mentally ill - he just had enough and struck back the only way he knew how and that would accomplish something.
Let's face it, get mistreated by the TSA and you get some BS boilerplate response from the bureaucrats in DC. Complain to your Congressman and, if anything, the same old boilerplate response about "keeping everyone safe".
I'm sure we'll find out that there's a lot of other shit happening to this guy - maybe: job sent overseas, more work piled on with no help even though the company is making record profits, .... I don't know.
And when you see the fat cats and the assholes in DC (that was redundant) flying on their private jets or at the very least, coasting through TSA checkpoints and not having to deal with the BS that they enact, it gets tiring.
Complaints fall on deaf ears. Our leaders have no idea what the rest of us people are going through.
Was he right? Hell no! But the fact of the matter is that folks are getting real tired of the ineptitude of our leadership in DC and the abuse by our Government.
She is introducing legislation today to confer Law Enforcement Powers upon TSA agents, including the right to carry firearms in the course of duty.
Nancy Pelosi just loves more guns, provided they're in the hands of government agents and not citizens.
total elimination of the TSA
Sorry, further arming everything and making everything into a military state isn't the right approach. Despite more guards the TSA agent would have been shot anyway. This "solution" solves nothing (except give the illusion that they are some how safer).
Pick up that can.
Now put it in the bin, no liquids on the plane!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
and there is a call for disarming the law abiding population
A TSA agent gets shot and the same people want them to be armed...
hypocrites
It is sad actually that today we really do need to think about what we say online for actual fear of the government. I am a US citizen, but I do not live in the US. Because I do travel there often to visit family, friends and to take advantage of the 1/2 price shopping land, I do need to take care what I say in an open forum.
I have some friends who are very vocal about the course the US has taken. They are also living Americans living abroad. They are always singled out for "random" extra security. One has even has his laptop taken for several hours and missed his flight for it. The other has has gotten two audit letters from the IRS. Before you ask, no, they are not brown people. Just normal guys who speak out.
Am I a coward from not shouting at the top of my lungs. Yeah, probably. But on the other hand, do I want to put my family through an IRS audit and random ass searches? No, I don't.
Especially coming from the TSA (yeah, yeah, it's the Union, not the TSA...pfffft) who used to get the panties in a twist over fingernail clippers and still does over a tube of toothpaste.
The Feds should look at this incident as a warning strip on the road. When you stray from the straight and narrow, it makes a huge racket to wake you up. The excesses of the Federal government are increasing every day and are starting to push some of the less stable over the edge. How long until it's not just some crazy guy off his meds and a normal person with a legitimate grievance...like a loved one being denied care under Obamacare?
The question is, will the Feds listen to the warning strip?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
This will only cause more needless deaths.
I don't even trust the TSA to scan for bombs properly, and now you want me to put GUNS in their hand?
This would make me feel incredibly unsafe, and I guarantee you it wouldn't be long before we hear of shootings started by these idiots.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Why is the US getting closer and closer to the state of things showed in that awesome game?
Don't get me wrong, the TSA are constitution breaking assholes, that do a million times more harm than even the theoretical good they could do.
But, they are searching people for guns and other contraband. And when they find some, what are they supposed to do? Ask the criminal carrying a weapon to calmly surrender to the unarmed TSA agents (the most hated people in all of the USA), so that you can be detained without trial for the next twenty years and tortured for information?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The price of a good handgun lately? And ammunition costs! On a 30K salary? No way.
I always liked the Archie Bunker solution to the hijacking problem in the 70's.
Issue a gun to each passenger when they board.
I wonder why they dont use some sort of system that dispenses a knockout gas.
And we propose a policy to arm all passengers before they enter the airport. Thereby we can guarantee the safety of all passengers from outside harm.
.....get rid of TSA completely. Much cheaper than guarding them.
Damn those union workers for expecting to be protected after the government has put targets on their backs with insane security policies and then stuck them in a high-risk environment for all of $30k/year.
How much risk would you take every day for $30k/year before asking for an armed guard to be put at the door to your cubicle hive? Tell you what, we could find out. Let's put a bunch of customer service phone center workers in a very public place and have them do their jobs out in the open and see how long it takes before people start taking shots at them and then we can ask them how it feels and if they want to be protected.
Fucking unions. Next they're going want safety equipment before going into coal mines.
You are welcome on my lawn.
One or one hundred or ten thousand dead isn't worth turning a country of over 300 million people into a police state. Oops, too late.
What the Rent-A-Pig union doesn't get is that someone willing to DIE to kill others won't be intimidated by armed guards. Intimidation works on a whole different class of people, those with something to lose. That's MOST folks, but nutters and terrs are quite free to ignore that dynamic so they do.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
These TSA security theaters provide a natural choke-point for future attack vector. Once AQ attacked the mall in Kenya, it was pretty clear they'd been reading Tom Clancy novels (Rainbow Six novel Teeth of the Tiger I think includes islamic terrorists who enter the country alongside illegal immigrants from mexico and attack a number of malls). I cannot recall where I read this, but in some other novel, the terrorists recognized that bombing airplanes or hijacking commercial airliners is not necessary. You can pack a lot of explosives into a civil-aviation plane and fly it where ever you want (I think NCIS did this last week). And you can attack the bottleneck that forms at security checkpoints. No need to fight through security at the airport when you can roll a few hundred pounds of C4 into the middle of the crowd that forms at the airport check points, taking out passenger and the security equipment too. That'll ground all flights for awhile. And how do you defend that? With a security checkpoint before the security checkpoint?
YES!!! Lets arm the most ILLEGITIMATE Government agency EVER CREATED!
Fools...
which means more queues which means ....
It's TSA checkpoints all the way down.
Lambasted by rightwing radio, evening news and comedians. Just a matter of time before self-proclaimed vigilantes act.
So in order to get through security, you have to get through security's security?
Didn't a McDonalds clerk get shot one time? They should be armed as well, oh and grocery store clerks and gas station attendants. (And Fred the guy two cubicles down and ... Oh hell just everyone.)
I know everyone loves to hate the TSA, but take a look at what Israel does. There are two reasons these kinds of events never happen in their airports:
1. Security lines are never long, by design, because a long line puts passengers at this kind of risk.
2. Passengers are checked by armed guards before even entering the airport. They rule out the possibility of car bombs and armed individuals before they even set foot inside.
are the answer to firearms. And then even more. Sure. What could possibly go wrong ?
*forehead slap*
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Bodyguards for cops, to protect them as they carry out their vital duties. And then those bodyguards can have bodyguards! The solution to America's employment problem is at hand! Unless Haliburton et. al. just ship in 3rd World mercenaries to do the guarding - that would be just like them.
There is no significant risk of being shot as a TSA traffic screener. Once, ever, does not make a trend. Far more TSA traffic screeners have been killed by drunk drivers or shot at home than shot on the job. Why doesn't anybody care about them?
The only justification for armed guards are airport security checkpoints is to expand the power of the TSA and Homeland Security. Therefore, it will happen.
Go ahead, MAKE my day!!!
That's the ticket!
Perhaps we can call the new unit the Praetorian Guard.
What could possibly go wrong?
They'll be handy when pay disputes arise.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just do away with the TSA and screening lines, and just put the armed guards on all the planes?
No more TSA at all.
That's right, we're looking at you, government.
Eat a dick.
The U.S. already has mandatory mental health checkups. They are called "elections". The results are increasingly appalling, but apart from occasional organized killing sprees abroad, the majority stays interned in the U.S. voluntarily.
Yes indeed.. prescreened in some sense.. you get to go through a shorter line and not take off shoes, belt, etc. or remove the laptop from the back. Kind of like going back to the 80s.
However, as more people participate in this program, the lines are getting longer. It used to be that there would be nobody in the Pre-Chek line and I'd breeze through (sneering at the proles who aren't *special* like I am; you might imagine me also using the Lexus Lane on the freeway, as my driver blew past the commoners in the other lanes). Last time I went through the line at LAX, there were almost as many people in the Pre-Chek line as the non Pre-Chek, *unspecial people* line. Our line did go faster; and there's no mm-radar; but these days, the line speed is determined more by the 10 seconds to run your stuff through the X-ray machine, more than the walk through and disrobing/rerobing. Yes, if you wind up in the line behind the bozo who hasn't ever been to an airport in their life, it's slower.. but they'll wind up in the Pre-Chek line too. (What do you mean I can't carry on my Katana? And I have to check my Glock?)
they are not adding any actual security and then they will all be perfectly safe
Dumbass--THINK about what you just wrote, AC. We don't live in a monarchy, we live in a democratic republic, where blocs of citizens elect representatives who mirror and/or promote their bloc's particular values against those of rival blocs. By saying "Government is the Enemy", you're saying WE are the enemy. What do you want, another civil war? Citizens killing off politicians, and then turning on the other citizens who elected those politicians? Anarchy for all? Here's a clue for you, MORON: Most people don't want to live in anarchy. They want to live in a society whose cultural values match their own. Gawddamn extreme anarchists--you're just as bad as those you call your enemy, and you are a discredit to sensible anarchists.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
This is entirely unnecessary. At every airport that I have traveled though there are armed security. They are the local sheriff and city police. They all have guns and can cross the checkpoints with them. This eliminates the need to arm the stazi that requires us to show our papers. I call Godwin's law on myself, because it is all too true. Maybe the police are at the airport only to stop the TSA from stealing personal belonging.
All a staged event for a push to get armed thugs in the airports. Right now a large number of people know that the TSA is a joke and that they like to infringe on people's rights. They are the ones that make comments to TSA agents and point out how stupid their whole sham is. Can have that! With a gun they will stop about 3/4 of that and the others they can "detain" at the end of a guns.
Clearly what's needed here is a security system that prevents passengers from approaching the TSA security lines with anything harmful in their possession.
I suggest the creation of a Transportation Security Agency Security Agency (TSASA), which can run baggage and personal possessions through x-ray machines and make people walk through metal detectors prior to screening by the TSA.
Just declare airports to be gun-free zones cause it works everywhere else it is tried
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I can easily see pushing back the borders of the "secure" area. My girlfriend suggested making it the entire airport building complex, not just the terminals. Guards at every outside door, and security searches. Then again, people congregate at the shuttle bus stations in the parking lot... and there are a lot of people on the highways, a bomb or a shooter would be bad there, too. People often live in apartments, they have lots of residents, tightly packed. Probably best to have an armed guard search you as you get out of bed, thern drive you to the airport. Can't get any safer than that!
to protect the people from the TSA
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
IMO, they should use local police. No need to bloat the payroll ad nauseum.
Unless there are plenty of officers sitting around doing nothing while on the clock, wouldn't using local police just shift the cost of all those additional positions to the local government? Why would you want to hide the costs of the TSA?
They'll be getting lovely new uniforms though! http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Die_Uniformen_der_Allgemeinen_SS_32-45.jpg
This is a great idea. It clearly tells the public that the shooting at LAX was not the work of a crazy extremist but rather reflects the growing attitude of many Americans. And that they expect it to continue. It will help reinforce the "Them vs. Us" image that TSA has worked so hard to build in the last decade. How could you not want some lower IQ TSA type nervously standing around with a gun, looking for someone to shoot if they dare complain about pat downs that rise to the level of sexual molestation or show unhappiness when the TSA decides to throw away their expensive spare laptop battery?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I was taking a flight in 2008. I was in one of those long and winding lines waiting to go through security.
Someone in the middle of the line answers their cell phone.
A security guard from across the room points at him and shouts "NO CELL PHONES". Dude doesn't even realize he's being yelled at, so the guard INSTANTLY rips the cordon off, still pointing at the cell phone holder. Is marching towards him, pushing through the crowd, hand on (thankfully holstered and bolted) gun, shouting "NO CELL PHONES PUT IT AWAY!"
That's who they want to hire-- except they want to give them automatic assault weapons and no oversight
I haven't flown since 2008, swore off doing so once the rapey scanners came in. Most assuredly will NOT even reconsider with this policy in place.
Because after all, armed guards in charge of protecting "national security" at any cost will never overreact, make someone like, say, a mother with her child believe she's doing something wrong, make her nervous, then chase her down the streets of Washington and execute her in front of her baby.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
then it moved to the malls and the shops, your local street corner
soon little armed guards will be popping up everywhere....reminding us of just how fucked we are
when i went to a certain airport in USA a few weeks ago the only armed person that i saw was a police officer and a police dog in the check-in terminal. no armed guards at security checkpoint. i didn't see any other guards on patrol, not even near the gates or the food court. come to think of it, i didn't see any near the baggage claim area either. just making observation.
Cant we just have the TSA pistol whip every passenger? That way we can be sure it's safe?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Give me a break. If the job's too risky quit.
And stop stealing out of peoples' luggage!!
I think the local police are there anyway, maybe they can have a TSA detail, and compensated by the TSA. Bring some fresh eyes into the table.
Concerned Citizens Everywhere call for TSA to be dissolved as worthless, weak and an outright slap in the face to every freedom loving person everywhere.
After putting up with profiling, perhaps it's high time to:
1. Pass a federal "shall-issue" mandate on the states, like the drinking age of 21 and the .08% BAC. States failing to pass shall-issue gun legislation face loss of their highway funding.
2. Put Sikhs in charge of air security. Let them exercise their noble tradition in service and dignity as they do in the rest of the world. Such visibility will serve well to do away with the stereotypes.
This will never happen because governments will never pass laws expanding liberty. Such would be contrary to the nature of government.
People would not be arming themselves and going apeshit if they were looking forward to a great life. And I think the whole pro-militarism thing is to blame as well. When I grew up, the bad guys carried guns and shot people in the back. Now we have sniper competitions on the education networks. Its sick.
Are they really suggesting that giving agents the ability to fire weapons into or near crowds of hundreds of people is going to make things safer?
Union Pros: Long term training, retention of skill, knowledge, and quality. Union Cons: Mandating inefficiencies, protecting bad workers. This most definitely seems a case showing the negative side of unions. They are mandating more expense, more employees, higher paid employees, all for next to zero gain. Actually, negative gain because armed guards will add to the intimidation they already enjoy. This is why so many people have an extremely negative view of unions. They are shooting themselves in the foot for the long term when they make emotional (irrational) demands like this.
The solution to prevent future events like this is for the TSA agents to cool their arrogant attitudes, and stop acting like Nazi stormtroopers. I remind everybody that before 9/11 there were no TSA and no events similar to this one.
Get rid of the TSA.
They need queues with bullet resistant glass leading to metal detectors.
Having a gun doesn't stop someone from pulling out a gun and shooting you.
Having a gun doesn't help when the shooter is in a mass of bystanders waiting in line.
If you split off the people who fail a preliminary metal detector test THEN that area could have someone with a gun.
But even there an bullet resistant airlock system would be better.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They caught the guy, so why are they going to bother increasing local law enforcement presence? It's pointless. That's like calling the firedepartment to extinguish a fire that has been extinguished for days.
tsa doesn't need guns ,hell most cant even speak English second most aren't from this country ,three most of them aren't smart enough to have a gun.sorry the one got killed .but you people are nothing more than a rent a cop .police need guns you idiots don't not police.and if you people acted better people wouldn't hate you .
I hate the TSA almost as much as I hate customs agents who get their jollies from being subhuman assholes.
TSA groupings, ominous security announcement loops, harassment (swabbing drinks within Airport restaurants) and backscatter x-rays are the top reasons I avoid flying. No place does "police state" and fear induced freakout / overreaction ring more true than at the airport.
Having said this I was always puzzled by the whole screening situation... Your looking for outliers.. a low probability event..yet what is the TSA to do if one is discovered? What do you expect to go down if there is not a credible state dispenser of violence on hand to "regulate"?
For example bad guy tries to smuggle bad thing thru security. Bad guy gets caught. Bad guy has no problem using force. If there is no security nearby.. as much as I hate the TSA as an organization... individual GED earning goons deserve better outcomes assuming there is statistically relevant need to defend against this situation.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was none while TSA display cases and blogs are filled with weapons of all kinds virtually all of them were innocent mistakes people forgetting to take that shit out of their bags rather than any intent to cause harm. Being a cab driver or pizza delivery "agent" is still infinitely more dangerous than being a TSA agent.
I think TSAs own admission nobody is attacking airports speaks for itself. Changing policy in response to specific incidents rather than objective determinations on how to best utilize and allocate limited resources in the long run causes more problems than it solves.
Isn't this the same TSA that the government was recently seriously considering disbanding?
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Barney Fifes in the country.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
In 10+ years, with over 60,000 employees, this has happened only one time. It doesn't seem as if TSA employees have a job that puts them in particular risk. I'm sure that it is much more dangerous to be a mail carrier than a TSA agent. I don't object to unions looking after their employee's welfare and safety. That is the point, after all. But demanding armed guards as a knee jerk reaction to a single incident seems like a laughable response without any real analysis behind it.
Classic bureaucracy. Now we need protectors to protect the protectors. The question is who will protect the protectors hired to protect the protectors? It sounds to me as though those protectors will need protection at some point since one guard with a gun isn't much protection. Perhaps they'll need something with more clout such as a Department of Homeland Security Security which will have the necessary resources to provide security to Homeland Security.
In a digression from the discussion about the current administration's gun policy:
The purpose of the second amendment is to ensure we are able to end this country the same way it began. How are we supposed to have an effective armed rebellion without assault rifles?
It's arguable that the historical reason for the Second Amendment had more to do with avoiding the need for a standing army, with all the expense and centralized power that entails, especially at a time when 1) the federal government, such as it was, had a shoestring budget, and 2) the states were still very leery of granting any more power (read: ceding any more sovereignty) than absolutely necessary to this new centralized entity.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
How many civilians do you know who feel up children and call it security? And get paid to do so?
I fly a lot, and I always opt for the pat-down, at least in part because
I believe it creates more work for the security goons and I think they
ought to work for their wages.
However, not once have I gotten any impression that I was being "felt up".
In point of fact, during the pat down the TSA person dons a fresh pair of gloves and then
rubs the surface of the clothing I am wearing, but they don't linger over
any areas of the body or act like a pervert or anything. They are simply
rubbing the gloves in order to pick up trace amounts of elements which would
be present if the person being checked happened to be carrying explosives.
I don't like having to go through security, and I believe that the TSA are a bunch
of morons who do little or nothing to increase actual safety, BUT I have to say that
all the talk about "being felt up" is grossly inaccurate in my many experiences and
that from what I have witnessed myself, the TSA goon always seems to be more uncomfortable
about the whole thing than I am. It's a simple 30 second pat down and then you can move on
and walk to the boarding area.
If you think the pat-down they do is "being felt up" I submit that you have no idea what being felt up
is really like. Actually, I recommend you try being strip-searched if you want to experience a true feeling
of being violated. Drop your pants and bend over and spread your cheeks and cough, motherfucker.
And then you won't feel nearly as much like whining about a simple pat down, because you will know
that it's not nearly as bad as what could be happening if things ratchet up just a bit tighter on the security
front.
.
is ONE suicide bomber at a TSA checkpoint.
Armed guards aren't going to help much and it's already happened in Russia.
BTW, what happens if you put some putrescene or corpscine in your shoes before going to the airport?
In my travels, I have been through many international airports. This will make US airports look a lot more like those in other countries, where the enforcers carry guns - often automatic weapons. Might as well use the way they do it in India - military at the airport entrances, and you don't get in unless you have a ticket for that day. Obvious Military visibility makes it much easier to control the population.
I was in line in Toronto the other day, listening to the gate agent trying to help a passenger. The passenger needed to make a connection and wanted to get his seat assigned. Trouble was, the passenger had made it into Canada from the US aboard an airplane - without any ticket at all. Not lost ... it had not been issued in the first place.
Awkward for all concerned ...
Just make it illegal to bring a gun into an airport. That should fix things.
Look I really do not understand why all the US posters do nothing by whine and whine. Either do something or shutup.
So I am going to take your money once again not for your sense of false security but mine.
Security in prison is tighter than anything these moron can do. Yet prison cant stop rape murder or drugs.
Do you really think you get anything other than a pony show for your billions.
Please contact me at bridgeseller.com
Gun crimes correlate much better with gangs and drug turf wars than poverty.
The last thing we need is for those monsters to have guns they get to stick up our orifices as well
... right here motherfuckers!
Yet another reason added to an already long list of reasons why I will never visit the USA. I have visited about 20 countries all over the world and heve never felt unsafe. I doubt that would be the case in the massively overarmed and violent USA. I imagine I would be lucky to make it out alive.
I didn't read all of the comments, but got through a good many. Something that the TSA Union and all of the posting that I read missed is that arming the TSA, adding additional checkpoints out beyond the current TSA ones, and other similar type requests would not have stopped what happened. A guy with a hidden weapon (a gun this time, but could be a bomb next time, or poison gas, etc.) walked up to the first TSA agent he encountered and killed him. It is very, very difficult to prevent that from happening. Just ask the guys that man checkpoints for the military – people that usually have a lot of firepower ready to be used unless some dumb presidential order tells them not to (e.g. Beirut Marine Barracks bombing).
Taking the job as a guard means that you are volunteering to be put in harm's way. That is the nature of the job. To keep your life, do all you legally/morally can to protect yourself and your charges.
While going thru the routine of passing through security to board a domestic flight, I misunderstood the command to have my laptop open. instead, I had opened the hard-shell briefcase which I carry the computer in. exposing the laptop (closed) and a ziplok with several bottles of prescription medication. Each jar of medication (containing only a week's supply of pills) which were in the original pharmacy containers. The TSA agent barked that I was supposed to have the laptop open (my bad) and when I reached to open the computer she got even more aggressive and commanded that I get my hands off because now, "It's in our hands now and you are not allowed to touch it". At that point she picked up the case and computer and disappeared for 20 to 30 minutes. When she returned, still irate, and gave me back my computer. Wow, I guess I was the only chump she could harass that morning and, no doubt, ran a thorough check on all of my meds (just to make sure that I wasn't a drug dealer with my 'sample kit' with me). By her attitude, one would have thought that I had potentially committed a capital offense. This woman (middle aged) was was just a bully with a badge and an overdose of attitude. A polite admonishment would have sufficed and left me a modicum of respect for TSA. Oh well, you get what you pay for.