A CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE

There was an unfortunate shooting at LAX over the weekend when a young man decided to take his troubles with the TSA to the airport and take them out on the Homeland Security people that all of us have grown to despise. When you think about it, the institution of federal transportation security people was part of the Patriot Act and other misguided legislative stupidities that came in the fallout of the attack on 9/11. The competent folks that searched passengers boarding planes in the US were pretty professional on the whole and it is hardly their fault that dedicated killers got on the planes with box cutters. The fault for that lay a little higher up the food chain with the people that let in bronze-age anti-Americans to roam loose in the US while pretending to get an education. I cannot recall a single underwear or shoe bomber before the TSA came into being but the stories of people boarding aircraft with loaded guns after the TSA arrived on the scene are legion.

Have you ever wondered how many American women are languishing in Saudi Arabia because they married one of those Saudi students, just like the hijackers, who seemed so nice and with it and wealthy while attending schools in the US? They flew back to Arabia and had their passports lifted by their husbands and went into purdah. How many of them cannot get out of Saudi Arabia because they have the same status as the other slaves of the Saudis? We'll never know because the State Department wouldn't dream of telling us the names.

Back to the troubling story of the LAX shooting. The Wall Street Journal published an article that questions the wisdom of the current policy that leaves the TSA unarmed and the police untethered to provide security for the TSA as their only priority. It's interesting that they don't call for arming the TSA but that would be difficult to do since huge numbers of the TSA are felons and unable to carry a gun. They posit that improved security such as armed guards at the check points would improve security and that's not hard to disagree with unless you suggest that everybody with a permit should be able to fly and carry their weapon just as they do when they ride the train or bus. When you talk about letting armed citizens fly with their pistols, then the idea of more guns at the airport is crazy talk.

I'm not sanguine about more police at these sorts of situations since the police seem to be most adept at two things: maximizing the amount of money spent on buying themselves tactical gear, armored vehicles, assault rifles, sniper rifles, machine guns and ammunition and, beyond a certain critical number/concentration of cops, armed police turn into some sort of pack and open fire on everybody and everything and generally shoot until they run out of ammunition.

I still fly and I would rather do it without having the police shooting the crap out of innocent bystanders while cops rush in confusion to shoot an unarmed man that evidently needs shooting. If the airport is too dangerous for the TSA, I suggest they go home and leave the rest of us alone.