Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on November 23, 2010 at 7:57pm

Secondly: While I really, really want to agree with the fourth amendment argument; I'm not sure about it. It comes down to whether flying is a right. You could always choose to take the train or drive to your destination, which is an opt out of the whole thing.

Does it matter if flying, specifically, is a right? In using the services provided by private airline companies, you are operating within your rights as an American, are you not? I fail to see why the constitution should not protect you here.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Velogiraptor on November 24, 2010 at 10:57am

In cases involving private businesses, the constitution was applied where equal protection was not applied. I believe there's already case law saying that the 4th doesn't apply to private travel, but I can't remember at all what it was. I could be remembering wrong, so please take it with a grain of salt. That said, the place where I can see it applying is that i believe the TSA is a government office, which would mean the 4th should apply to them, and since they're doing the screenings, there may be a case. fingers crossed.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Frazer on November 23, 2010 at 11:48pm

badwolf42:
These things are the product of lobby money leading to expensive equipment purchases that are unneeded.

Agreement with that.
Along with the TSA and FAA always looking out for ways to increase their funding and maintain their bureaucracy and jobs.

My main question:
I've never had anyone give a good reason why the aircrews had to go through security checks at all...
I rememebr on 9/12/01, FrontSight offered to take any pilot through theire excellent tectical pistol treaining for free (training levels for any, above and beyond that of most police or military -even SWAT or S.F.)
On 9/15/01, the FAA passed a rule -prohibiting aircrews from carrying a pocketknife.
Even today, they're draging their feet on letting aircrew carry arms. Active police and military can carry, but most don't because it's too much hassle.
Our coverage with air marshals is still barely 5%. With 30,00 departures each day, it won't get better. Accept good real training measures (which anybody -not just police and air crews can meet), and trust the people we're already supposed to trust.

Contrary to allowing infringements on our 4th rights, making us all suspect just to be a little safer, I'd rather relax some of the knee-jerk stuff (liquid bans, tweezers and nail clippers, etc) and go with the experienced and accepted real security measures we see elsewhere.
If air crews were allowed to be armed, and since passengers won't allow control to thugs even if they have a real combat knife, there's not much sense even banning pocket knives and the innocuous things they're confiscating now -vastly speeding things up, and easing stress and bad feelings all around.


good article:
Israel’s Airport Security, Object Of Envy, Is Hard To Emulate Here
System Based on Interaction and Group Profiling Doesn’t Travel Well
By Nathan Guttman January 06, 2010
http://www.forward.com/articles/122781/

It says that we wouldn't adopt these techniques here because of time & money, but what is the current "system" costing us?
They profile groups and ethnicities, yes. Is it rank hypocrisy for us to accept that, to convenience most of us?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Velogiraptor on November 24, 2010 at 11:00am

I agree totally. A naked picture every day should not be a condition of reporting to work for an air crew. Also, all of these measures are knee jerk. I think they'd do better by using dogs in line. Cheaper, cuter, and they can smell the low density stuff that may not show up on a body scan.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Malcolm on November 27, 2010 at 7:57am

They didn't feel his junk. He was put through the Dick Measuring Device instead.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Frazer on November 25, 2010 at 2:42am

Same old stuff. We've been here before, and we've continued to let our dear government servants pull the wool over our eyes.


In response to earlier more stringent security steps they announced

- - - - quote - - - -
http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=2447

1) The people who took out the WTC and the Pentagon were passengers who could have gone through all of the above steps, so the entire approach is bankrupt from its inception.
2) Because the entire list of new "stepped up security measures" would not have stopped the single worst terrorist attack in America's history but is being presented as if it can make people safer, it is a fraud.
3) If the federal government is so contemptuous of the intelligence of the American people that they believe they can get away with this fraud, they should be set straight with questions like these:
A) Why haven't the FAA with support from other federal officials lifted the ban on pilots' carrying of firearms? Are you even seriously considering it? If not, why not? And if not, because none of the above measures would have stopped the single worst terrorist attack in modern American history, what can you do to truly make commercial air travel safe -- not just "feel" safe -- without jeopardizing civil liberties?
B) When do We The People get to offer our input on the decision-making process as to how to insure our safety where the federal government has not only failed miserably to do so but has at least partially inspired 24 people to commit suicide while taking out thousands of our own people in the process?
C) What is your exact justification for prohibiting a pilot from using a handgun with airplane-safe, frangible ammunition to save the lives of 20,000 American citizens?
- - - - end quote - - - -


I find very few problems, in this bit about allowing even qualified passengers to carry

Airplanes & Guns: Myths and Reality
http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=2475

or this
- - - - quote - - - -
http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=3506

... policy to destroy a hijacked airliner while denying the pilots firearms with which to defend the airliner needs a closer look. Missiles can only be used to destroy an airliner that has been hijacked by terrorists and all on board will most certainly die.
The concept of arming airline pilots with firearms to prevent or stop a hijacking is viewed by some as an extreme and intrusive measure, but we think they’ve got it exactly backwards. The policy of sacrificing a civilian airliner with innocent Americans on board to keep terrorists from using it as a weapon, while at the same time refusing to allow the pilots an opportunity to offer a last resort, final line of defense is the extremist view that should be ridiculed and dismissed.
... we need to look at what motivates terrorists. Terrorists want to strike fear into our hearts by attacking us in unthinkable ways. They expect to die in the process. It is hard to imagine a more enticing scenario to a terrorist group than the prospect of forcing the United States to unceremoniously kill its own innocent citizens. Conversely, it would be nearly impossible to gain control of an airliner with armed pilots locked behind a reinforced cockpit door.
- - - - end quote - - - -

or this

- - - - quote - - - -
Airline Pilots Security Alliance
The Case For Arming Pilots
http://www.secure-skies.org/Arming_Pilots.php
(snip)
# Airline Flts per day: 28,000
Airborne Right Now: 4988
Flights Protected by 2 Armed Pilots: <3%
Flights Protected by Air Marshals: (est.) 2%
At Risk Flights: 95%
Taxes Spent on Airline Security: $12B
Airport Screening Failure Rate against concealed weapons: 75-95%
#Pilot Volunteers Refusing to Fly Armed Due to Program Problems: 50,000
Cost to Protect 2% of flights with Air Marshals: $700M/year
Cost to Protect 100% of flights with Armed Pilots: $15 M/year

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Malcolm on November 27, 2010 at 7:55am

Just because a safety measure isn't good enough to stop all possible terrorist attacks doesn't mean it should be abandoned. By your logic we should have no security measures, such as x-raying luggage, at all.

Also, what makes you so sure that the current security measures we have wouldn't have prevented a group of terrorists armed with box cutters? In any event, it seems that terrorists with weapons on planes are no longer really such a threat, because cockpit doors are reinforced and passengers know to fight back. The only real danger these days is that someone will try to sneak an explosive device on board a plane, but in that situation, having armed pilots (or anyone else armed) is not really much of a help.

Since pilots can crash a plane anyway if they so choose, I don't really have much objection to them packing, but this is unlikely to make much of a difference for the kinds of threats that we're likely to actually face.

And letting non-law-enforcement passengers carry firearms on board is the kind of lunacy I've come to expect from the NRA, an organization dedicated to providing guns to criminals.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Frazer on November 27, 2010 at 3:45pm

Malcolm :
>Just because a safety measure isn't good enough to stop all
>possible terrorist attacks doesn't mean it should be
>abandoned.

Nothing in that link said so. I didn't say so. Stringent common sense should be applied, IMO.

> By your logic we should have no security measures, such as
>x-raying luggage, at all.


If there's an air marshal or armed pilot, or L.E officer or military people, or a trained & trusted civilian on board armed, then I don't care if somebody wants to have their antique collectible dagger in their carry-on. (anybody remember the old movie "Warlock", where Richard Grant's warlock-hunter character wanted to hold onto the wether vane he was using to hunt Julian Sands' bad guy?)

In my daily carry backpack, I have a first aid kit that's a terrorist's heaven: pocket knife and safety razor, bandage shears, splinter tweezers (with the really fine sharp tip for taking hostages) nail clippers and the really dangerous cuticle nippers, peroxide and alcohol bottles, and all other sorts of devices of mayhem. (I started full-time carrying a kit, when I was using roller skates to get around. As you can tell, I wasn't a very good skater...)
Is such a thing in my carry-on a problem? Is it worth the time of the TSA agents or the other people in line for any such items to be confiscated? Even without armed defenders?

>Also, what makes you so sure that the current security measures
>we have wouldn't have prevented a group of terrorists armed
>with box cutters?

Ummm... 75%-90% failure to find hidden weapons?

> In any event, it seems that terrorists with weapons on planes
>are no longer really such a threat, because cockpit doors are
>reinforced and passengers know to fight back. The only real
>danger these days is that someone will try to sneak an explosive
>device on board a plane, but in that situation, having armed
>pilots (or anyone else armed) is not really much of a help.

So, taking away things like pocket knives and nail clippers and drinkable water & such makes no sense, does it?

Take all the money we're putting into TSA agents patting people down, and train more bomb-sniffing dogs, and it's all solved.

>And letting non-law-enforcement passengers carry firearms
>on board is the kind of lunacy I've come to expect from the
>NRA, an organization dedicated to providing guns to criminals.

I have yet to see any evidence for this claim. As far as I know, even the really intransigent "no compromise" gun rights groups say it's fine and advisable to enforce what we have now, and lock up the hardened career criminals.
How about the 70+year old woman who recently was arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic violence for slapping a mouthy rude abusive teen (who later pled for her g/mother in court).
She'll carry a permanent domestic abuse record, because the police who came by because the teen was raising hell let slip that the older woman had slapped her first.
I've heard some agitation for changing the rules regarding permanent records and firearm purchase blocks on cases like this, but is she the sort of dangerous criminal we need to be wary of?

And where in the old link I provided could anyone get the idea that they were advocating for the TSA, FBI, etc to allow career criminals to get the sort of enahnced carrry permits they were suggesting which would let qualified civilians carry?

And drop the rants against the NRA. They're known as "sell-outs" by other gun rights groups for helping to write and push through all sorts of "feel-good" nonsense gun prohibitions (it helps their membership and budget to have nonsense laws passed).
nrawol.net/

For such an air-carry permit for civilians (and officials and pilots etc), they were specifying certain strict rules regarding training levels to match the over-strained air marshals. Civilians on their own dime and time can and do train to such levels. No government job is required to have good sense and attentiveness.

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 3
• 4
• 5
• Next ›
• Page