
TSA union calls for armed guards at every checkpoint - sehrope
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/02/tsa-lax-shooting-armed-guards/3394601/
======
shazow
The next logical step is to expand the scope of the TSA's security—put full
body scanners at the airport entrances rather than boarding gates. In the
distant future, we can look forward to having periodic security checkpoints
when we go out to get some lunch.

Not what the OP is talking about, but I hope the conversation doesn't veer in
this direction.

Is this the first TSA casualty? Perhaps these odds aren't so bad after all.
Maybe we don't need to overreact and restructure all security just yet.

~~~
300bps
_The next logical step is to expand the scope of the TSA 's security_

Your sarcasm is spot on. The first time I flew after 9/11 and had to stand in
a 4 hour line to try to get through security I thought to myself, "If the
terrorists want to get us, why don't they just kill people waiting in the
security line?" Which obviously means we need a checkpoint before the
checkpoint. Which makes that first checkpoint a target, so we'll need a
checkpoint before that one and then it's checkpoints all the way down.

Beyond that, the fact that a crazed lunatic armed to the teeth could only kill
1 person in a crowded airport before being shot by police kind of says that
there was adequate security in place already. What does the TSA want - the
ability to stun everyone in a 300 meter radius anytime someone looks at them
funny?

~~~
anonymous
Why not this: You book a flight. Then when the day of your departure comes, an
armoured van with 3 paramedics, 15 SWAT officers, a dog unit and a team of
anaesthesiologists come to your house, put you to sleep, load you in a crate,
then you spend the entire trip to the airport asleep, along with your entire
flight and you only wake up at your destination. Hopefully your luggage wasn't
misplaced and neither were you. You're required to fast for at least 2 days
before a long flight, since bedpans aren't provided. For short trips, only
chloroform is administered. Waking up in the middle of flight is a federal
crime.

~~~
DougWebb
I think I'd actually like that... I've always found travelling to be the worst
part of going on vacation. :)

------
ck2
Well of course, that's definitely what we need guns, guns, more guns,
everywhere.

So now when the TSA makes a mistake, it will be a deadly mistake.

Or why even bring a gun to the airport when you can just take one from a
poorly trained TSA agent.

Or we could dissolve the TSA and homeland security theater while we are at it.

~~~
joshboles
While I agree with your sentiment, the TSA agents are not the ones to be
packing heat. They are asking for more local police presence.

"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, Cox said."

~~~
jonlucc
Armed security officer is not the same as a police officer.

~~~
lwhalen
I'd prefer to see armed citizens myself.

~~~
krapp
There are already plenty of armed citizens in the US. If this incident follows
precedent, gun sales will have spiked dramatically.

~~~
lwhalen
Those armed citizens are not allowed in airports by law. There's a reason
airports, along with schools, post offices, the state of California, etc, are
called 'victim disarmament zones' by the concealed-carry crowd.

~~~
krapp
I've heard that argument. For me, it breaks down in that it assumes there's a
correlation between the number of people carrying guns, and the number of
responsible people carrying guns who will actually react properly when
something happens.

~~~
lwhalen
I've yet to hear of a lunatic trying to shoot up a police station, a gunshop,
or a firing range - places where guns are prevalent. Also, Israel arms their
teachers[1] and school shootings have 'magically' gone way down. I'd like to
think that the deterrent effect would play a significant role in keeping our
kids and ourselves safe, aka the "an armed society is a polite society"
argument.

[1] - [http://www.examiner.com/article/arming-teachers-worked-
for-i...](http://www.examiner.com/article/arming-teachers-worked-for-israel-
and-thailand)

~~~
krapp
Your examples are irrelevant because they're controlled environments - in a
gun shop most of the guns are locked up behind bulletproof glass. The police
make certain they're the only ones with guns inside a police station. And
nobody would be stupid enough to start something in a place where people are
practicing shooting targets with already loaded weapons.

The point about the teachers is a good one - though culturally and politically
I don't know if that would work very well in the United States. But to be fair
to your point, we would have to also allow the students to carry guns to
protect themselves against the teachers, who now represent an oppressive and
violent arm of the state after all, and we're down to the same problem - how
does one tell the difference between a trustworthy, armed person and an
untrustworthy armed person?

------
DanielBMarkham
Just for some inside baseball American politics, when the TSA was set up, the
deal was that the Republicans wanted to be seen doing something about law and
order and the Democrats wanted a huge new block of unionized civil service
workers.

The interesting question is: which of these political rationales will hold and
which won't? Will there be a backlash against another union voice working in
their own interests more than the flying public? (After all, nobody wants
shootings at airports, why arm TSA workers and not, say, baggage clerks?) Will
there be a backlash against the entire idea of the TSA as being necessary for
safety?

My money says that neither of these will happen. Both rationales will hold up
fine, and American airports will continue to look more and more like prison
camps instead of places to celebrate our ability to freely travel. By having
conflicting and complementary rationales for existence, no matter what
happens, the overall response from the media and the political system will be
"We need more TSA"

~~~
rayiner
I dunno, it could cut the other way too. In addition to the usual complaints
about restricting freedom, if I were looking to build conservative opposition
to the TSA I'd shout from the rooftops that they're a heavily unionized,
heavily minority (45%) workforce.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
And you'd fall into a larger narrative between the parties that has nothing to
do with TSA.

That's the beauty of the way this was set up: we got the TSA because it fits
into the larger strategies both parties already have in place. You can't
attack it directly without just diving into good old domestic politics, which
in practice means that the agency is impervious to scrutiny.

So sure, take a shop-worn argument from the right and shout it from the
rooftops. It'll just blend in with the rest of the clamor.

------
Zigurd
Note that a mass casualty event at a checkpoint, where hundreds of people are
concentrated, standing around exposed, hasn't prompted called to eliminate
that structure for checkpoints.

That is, when the scenario I have seen predicted by security experts critical
of the TSA comes true, the TSA makes no comment at all about the fact that
they created this security problem in the first place.

~~~
conformal
> Note that a mass casualty event at a checkpoint, where hundreds of people
> are concentrated, standing around exposed, hasn't prompted called to
> eliminate that structure for checkpoints.

that an incident like you describe hasn't happened is an indication of the
fact that terrorism is really a spectre and not a real threat. dumb people
will claim "this hasn't happened because the nsa/cia/etc catches all the bad
guys!".

------
tptacek
How about _actual police officers_ , instead of the Dominos Pizza Box Brigade
we have now?

~~~
mkr-hn
This gets at the big problem with arming TSA agents. Even well-trained police
officers with decades of range practice screw up from time to time.

~~~
Zak
The belief that police officers are necessarily well-trained is overstated. I
wanted to be a cop for a while and I went through police training. I'm sure it
varies by jurisdiction and that many agencies have their own stricter
standards, but basic standards for police marksmanship aren't very high.

Based on the training I experienced, I'd expect the average police officer to
be able to hit a stationary, isolated man-sized target with a pistol most of
the time from up to 75 feet.

~~~
teddyh
I would have thought that the quality of police is measured not in their
ability to shoot and hit something, but _in their ability to refrain from
doing so_.

Your equaling of “well-trained police” with “police marksmanship” is a bit
frightening.

~~~
Zak
Well, in this case, I meant "well-trained in marksmanship", but your point is
valid. Training in marksmanship was inadequate; training in verbal de-
escalation was almost nonexistent.

------
betterunix
The next time you stand up for your dignity before the TSA, remember that
there are armed guards ready to shoot.

~~~
krapp
I don't think they want guns so they can shoot the people who complain about
having to get patted down.

~~~
betterunix
That's not the point. Just having an armed guy in a uniform standing there
will have the effect of intimidating passengers further, even if no guns are
ever fired.

~~~
krapp
That's valid, but there are already armed guards and officers in airports. An
argument could be made that more guns would be overkill (pun unintended) but I
don't know that it would necessarily increase the intimidation factor
significantly, would it?

~~~
betterunix
Well it depends on a few things. Are the guards standing at the checkpoints,
or just wandering around on patrol? Are they armed with handguns or assault
rifles?

For what it's worth, I did not notice a police presence or armed guards the
last time I flew out of LGA (a week ago).

------
w0rd-driven
I don't think the TSA will rest until all of their "agents" are precisely the
main character in the game "Papers, Please."

Here's what I gathered from the article. In a busy airport like LAX, only 5
people total were shot. The gunman had a note that he specifically targeted
the TSA. Out of the 5, 3 were TSA and 2 civilians. If LAX was busy, or not
even, it would stand to reason there were _far more_ civilians he could've
shot but didn't. Why he even bothered with those 2 is anyone's guess, at least
according to the note he left.

The subject of the note can be read one of 2+ ways. Either he's batshit insane
and none of his reasoning is sound or he's not quite insane and his reasoning
pushed him to believe that killing people was for a beneficial good. People in
general don't really wake up wanting to murder, nor do they want to murder a
very specific target. Whatever his justification to himself, it was enough to
spur him into action. Premeditated by the supposed fact that the gun was
bought legally.

The acts surrounding this incident do not mirror real terror like the recent
rise in school shootings, yet the TSA is clearly looking to illicit the same
level of sympathy. I call bullshit. Is it egregious that one person lost their
life? Sure. Is this an act of terrorism? That's an extremely hard sell in
light of the note he wrote. If anything he wanted to terrorize the TSA only,
because its hard to believe he didn't have a "target rich environment" of
civilians in a busy airport like LAX. One could reason that any shooting is an
act of terror but that notion never seemed to exist before 9/11\. People kill
others with guns daily in this country, so what makes this any different?

Take this hypothetical: if the TSA didn't exist, would this shooting have ever
taken place? I say no. The TSA will never look at themselves as a source of
FUD, propaganda, or terrorism but the reaction from this person shouldn't be
taken lightly, either. Yet it is. Instead of having clear reflection on how to
mitigate this from happening again, they're going in the direction of
provoking it! What. The. Fuck. Are. These. People. Smoking? And no, I do not
want any of the batshit insane in my pipe, please.

------
ErsatzVerkehr
But who will guard the guards who are guarding the guards?

~~~
forktheif
There are guards all the way down.

~~~
coldcode
I'd rather have turtles.

------
darkxanthos
Wow. This is the same logic that got us to having the TSA to begin with.

------
smtddr
Of course, normal human reaction. And of course, _nothing can go wrong_ with a
nervous & not-so-well trained TSA agent with an armed guard at his beck and
call at an airport-checkpoint; where people tend to be stressed out under
already-existing conditions unrelated to TSA.

I'm looking at my crystal-ball. I'll tell you what's going to happen next.
Someone, a minority I'm sure, will be killed for looking/acting suspicious.
Obama will give some kind of speech that we should all just learn to get
along. Hateful comments will be all over the 'net for a few weeks. Protests
will happen, but will be halted because I'm sure protests are not okay at
airports. So the protests will happen somewhere else. The TSA agent and/or
armed-guard will not be found guilty of murder, but he'll quit his job because
of all the hateful/death-threats messages he gets. A 2nd tragic event will
happen in an American airport involving TSA/armed-guard. This 2nd incident
will be much more serious because this time the victim won't be a brown
person; nobody cares about them anyways. It'll be a white, Russian or Asian
person. They'll stop having armed guards after this 2nd incident. The TSA will
be renamed or moved away from the checkpoint areas they are at now; to be
right in front of the door to the jetway. But then, something bad will happen
again, people will say it's too crowded and panic-prone for that location to
have TSA.... they'll be moved back to the previous checkpoints, unarmed. This
whole cycle will repeat or someone will just shutdown the TSA, like they
should have done ......in the beginning[1]

1\.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybRrbNjWW3k&t=6m58s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybRrbNjWW3k&t=6m58s)

------
RexRollman
To me, the real issue is, is this a frequent enough problem that really needs
addressing. I don't believe it is.

~~~
vidarh
Terrorism wasn't a frequent enough problem to justify the TSA in the first
place. Whether or not its a real problem is irrelevant to the people making
the power grabs.

------
rayiner
Who decided it was a good idea to let the TSA unionize?!

~~~
tutufan
Right--the problem here is actually unions and not whatever we were thinking.

------
BudVVeezer
Every TSA checkpoint I've ever been through has had an armed police officer
there. So what's this "call for armed guards"?

~~~
btgeekboy
The armed guards are local police. The call is to arm some TSA agents.

------
pygy_
It may not be a bad thing.

The security theater is a on downwards slope, and it has too much momentum to
be slowed down, let alone be stopped or reversed.

Let it go faster. The sooner it crashes, the better.

\--

Actually, I'm on the fence regarding this line of argument, but I think it had
to be made, as a counterpoint to the backlash seen in the other comments.

When your adversary's worst enemy is its own weight, you're rarely in a good
position.

------
codex
Most of the comments here try to spin this story as anti-TSA, which is
laughable. Fact is, a man with an assault rifle targeted a vulnerable spot at
an airport. That man was _batshit insane_ , which means that while today that
man targets TSA agents, tomorrow that man could be suckered in by some other
random propaganda pamphlet or web site.

If TSA didn't exist, Mr. Violent Crazy Man simply takes up another cause and
chooses another target, and without the TSA, he could could have taken down a
plane in-flight, causing 300 deaths rather than one, and incalculable economic
damage. Thank you, TSA, for limiting what such men can do. You are the front
line of the crazy filter.

------
code_chimp
Great, mall cops with guns. I feel safer already.

------
zdw
Everyone else calls for the complete and immediate disbandment of the TSA.

------
Silhouette
Here's an interesting counterpoint to this argument I read yesterday, from
someone who worked in the air travel industry but not directly in security:

[http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/01/opinion/hawk-dont-arm-
tsa/...](http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/01/opinion/hawk-dont-arm-
tsa/index.html)

------
mindslight
I have an easier idea for these people's safety: stop putting on the uniform
of an organization that needs to be demolished.

How many cumulative travelers' lives have been lost waiting in line for their
delusionary make-work theatre?

~~~
glenra
The death toll due to TSA is undoubtedly large, but the bigger loss of life
component of it is likely from people dying in an auto accident after they
choose to drive rather than fly.

------
coldcode
Security shouldn't be a reaction to a singular event. You can't defend against
the lone insane attacker. Yet politics always demands instant (and likely
poor) decisions.

------
smnrchrds
When a mass shooting occurs at an school, nobody suggests it's a good idea to
have armed security at every school entrance. Why is this any different?

~~~
anon1385
>nobody suggests it's a good idea to have armed security at every school
entrance

They do unfortunately: [http://nation.time.com/2012/12/20/how-to-prevent-more-
sandy-...](http://nation.time.com/2012/12/20/how-to-prevent-more-sandy-hooks-
arm-the-school-staff/)

 _A week after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut
elementary school, the executive vice president of the National Rifle
Association broke his silence on the tragedy to call for stronger security in
schools. “I call on Congress today, to act immediately to appropriate whatever
is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this
nation,”_

------
jonlucc
If this happens, it should be local police officers.

~~~
btgeekboy
It already is. Airport police patrolling LAX were the first people on the
scene, within about 60 seconds, per the LA Times article I read recently.

------
memracom
Why? Don't they trust the armed police officers stationed at every checkpoint?
You know, the ones that captured the shooter in LAX.

------
rtpg
to people complaining about the existence of the TSA, why don't you guys
actually give it some thought. Before the TSA, there were differing standards
across states/cities/airports concerning airport security. Now, everything has
been unified under this single body.

This ends up being a double-edged sword. Easier for some scanner company to
lobby one group rather than 50. But for us, we just need to convince one
organisation to ease up (plus the FAA sometimes too). "Dismantling" the TSA
won't get rid of airport checkpoints no more than dismantling the IRS won't
get rid of taxes. Concentrating more on getting the TSA to create laxer
policies will go a lot further than efforts to compeltely destroy the agency.

In any case, this is obviously the expected answer to the event, just like
every school shooting leads to asking for more armed guards (even armed
teachers sometimes).

