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TSA Has Record-Breaking Haul In 2014: Guns, Cannons, and Swords
An anonymous reader writes The TSA has gathered an impressive pile of confiscated weapons this year. In early November the agency had already discovered 1,855 firearms at checkpoints. In addition to guns, they've also collected machetes, hatchets, swords, giant scissors, brass knuckles, cannonballs, bear repellent and, this past October, an unloaded cannon. "Maybe someone has a lucky inert grenade they brought back from some war, or a nice cane was given to them and they forgot that the thing is actually a sword," said Jeff Price, author of Practical Aviation Security, "It's the people that are carrying stuff like chainsaws that make me wonder."
These were items confiscated, i.e. stolen from citizens. Heaven forbid that American citizens think they have a right to keep and bear arms. Bearing arms is the mark of a terrorist. Not the kind of terrorist who actually blows up buildings or shoots people, mind you, rather just one who plays the part of "Terrorist" in the Security Theater.
Wow. I mean, I travel a ton and get annoyed by the TSA as much as the next guy, but you really think it's OK to take a gun onto an airplane? Agree to disagree. People who need to transport their legally owned firearms can do so through the simple act of checking them. There isn't an airline or country the world over that would allow firearms, not to mention loaded _with rounds chambered_ (FTFA) onto a plane.
We can argue all we want to about the cannon (I'm with the anon who thinks if you manage to hijack a plane with it... congrats!), but guns, grenades, large knives... just check it! This isn't a terrorism thing. It's basic safety 101, especially in an already stressful, crowded environment.
--------------------- -me, Crusher of those who are Foolish (don't be foolish)
you really think it's OK to take a gun onto an airplane
Not much worse than taking a gun to a shopping mall or movie theater, actually.
Shopping malls don't tend to depressurize when punctured.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
fear: Americans were once again this year permitted to take their uncodifiable fear of terrorism along each and every flight.
compliance:unquestioned, lock step obedience to a national travel policy thats done nothing to reduce or eliminate terrorism, as domestic events like the Aurora and giffords shooting have simply been redefined as tragedies. Anders Brevik's christian crusade of bloodshed was not stopped by the inability to bring nail clippers onto a plane.
poverty: americans got to take their looming debt, foreclosures, and reposessions along for the ride while dutifully shuffling sixty billion dollars to the department of homeland security, an agency that failed to stop terrorism like the benghazi bombing, or the boston marathon bombing, at all.
Good people go to bed earlier.
From the paternalist, condescending article: Beyond firearms, of course, TSA officers encounter an extremely wide variety of other prohibited items at airport checkpoints, including ... an unloaded cannon.
Because archeologist or collectors should absolutely check in priceless historical artifacts! It's not like baggage handler would steal anything, or the airlines would lose luggage, ho ho, how silly.
Hey, this thing was a firearm once, right? So it's totally justified, innit? Even though the picture even shows that the thing is rusty, unable to fire, and very old.
Do you know how funny it is in Dilbert cartoon when the PHB adopts a tone of condescending smugness to assert misinformed, ill-reasoned opinions? Well, somehow, these bureaucrats don't manage to make it funny.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Shopping malls don't tend to depressurize when punctured.
Neither do aircraft.
The pressurisation pumps are more than capable of keeping up with the amount of air leaking through a thumb-sized hole.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
People who need to transport their legally owned firearms can do so through the simple act of checking them.
There is about the same chance of a gun getting discovered by the TSA at checkpoint as there is of getting your gun discovered in luggage. However, the chances of them confiscating it if discovered at the checkpoint is 100%, while the chance of TSA stealing it out of your luggage is probably only about 1/4 or an 1/8th of that. Statistics say that you should check your gun, because 80% or so of the time, it will not get stolen.
Unfortunately, in this day and age, you really should carry on anything worth more to you than a pair of jeans. Since you can no longer lock your luggage, and the TSA agents have stolen billions of dollars of items out of luggage, you are a fool to check anything valuable.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Pretty much what I thought. Let's compare that to how many of these things would have gotten on a plane pre-security theater.
Guns? Nope. Metal detector. ... heavy. Not dangerous.
Hatchets, Chainsaws and the like? Nope. Metal detector, not to mention that these things are frickin' bulky.
Cannonballs? Erh... Metal detector, but without a cannon they're just
Bear repellant? Oh. No. You could have gotten that on board. Using it would have been a different issue, since yes, you could have maced the whole crew and some passengers... before the rest of the passengers pile up on you and KILL you because they're afraid you might be a 9/11 attacker.
Folks, the 9/11 attacks are like the old trojan horse story (the real one, not the malware). It worked once. ONCE. It will never ever work again. Nobody will ever again go "oh look, a horsie, our enemies made us a present, let's haul it into our fortress!". And neither will people sit down quietly and hope that the hijacking will be over soon. The reason people did that was simply that until 9/11, that's how hijacking worked. You hijack a plane, you demand to fly to some godforsaken country where you trade the passenger hostages against some "political" prisoners. That's how this spiel worked. 9/11 changed that.
I promise you, if there are ever again 4 idiots with carpet knifes trying to hold up a plane, they have exactly ZERO chance of survival. What's the worst that could happen to you if you attack them? Well, they could ... cut you... What WILL happen if you don't? Plane -> Building -> fiery death.
What's the logical thing to do?
CHARGE!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I travel and every day I see pocket knifes, souvenir knifes being stolen at the checkpoints. The other day my credit card size stainless steel multi-tool (ruler, screwdriver, wrench and a 2 centimeter cutting edge) has been confiscated because it had a less than one inch "blade". Yikes.
To be fair, John Pistole (the TSA head) tried to drop this restriction and permit knifes with blades <= 2.36 inches, but transportation workers, victims groups, and various congressmen thru a hissy-fit, so he was forced to drop it.
2.36 inches!! Land of the brave, my arse.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
If someone had a gun on September 11, 2001 perhaps the history would be different. In Soviet Russia all pilots were armed, and rightly so.
I travel and every day I see pocket knifes, souvenir knifes being stolen at the checkpoints. The other day my credit card size stainless steel multi-tool (ruler, screwdriver, wrench and a 2 centimeter cutting edge) has been confiscated because it had a less than one inch "blade". Yikes.
Every single day passengers bring bottles of whiskey and other alcohol in the glass bottles, which is essentially a ceramic blade/knife, if the bottle is broken. Heck, you can buy alcohol in the airplane.
I have interviewed several airport security directors and directors supplying security solutions. All of them, in private, agreed that this is a security theater.
No it wouldn't. It wasn't a problem to fight against the hobby knives unarmed either, no one expected the hijackers to be suicide terrorist, and the only thing that would make a difference is hind-sight.
let's also consider that there have been no successful terrorist activity on US airlines since all these measures were put in place.
However, all non-successful attempts were stopped by passengers on the aircraft, not TSA.
TSA cannot point to a single example of a terrorist being stopped by them. Not one.
(And you know they would be shouting it from the rooftops, given that they brag about stealing items from non-terrorists as if their agents had done something good.)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Pre-911 being hijacked meant "If you sit down and be quiet, we fly this plane to Cuba, protest for a bit and then everyone goes free. An inconvenience, but nobody gets hurt. If you try to fight back, you'll be killed." So even if someone had a gun in the first two planes, they would have likely kept quiet until it was too late.
The passengers in the third plane did try to shoot back when they found out what happened to the first two planes, but a passenger with a gun might not have made much of a difference. At that point, the terrorists had control of the airplane and even a gun wouldn't have given the passengers the upper hand quick enough to keep the terrorists from crashing the plane.
Nowadays, if someone tries to hijack a plane - even if they intend the "flight to Cuba" kind of hijacking - the passengers are going to rise up, guns or no guns.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Not only does it let you lock the gun, but there is no way in hell any airport or airline is going to let themselves be "the one who lost a passenger's gun", because that means some criminal somewhere just got their hands on a firearm that they were responsible for transporting safely. If you want your luggage to arrive safely, a starter pistol or flare gun or similar are probably among the best insurance options you can buy.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...