

Man boards plane at IAH with loaded gun in carry-on - ceejayoz
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7848683

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jrockway
This is important to keep in mind. Many people are willing to give up liberty
and convenience for safety, and I can understand that. But the TSA is not
actually effective, which means we are getting stripped-search for no reason
other than to make some friend of a government employee rich.

I can't wait until someone uses a gun to hijack a plane. Then what? Metal
detectors and full-body imaging to prevent that from happening again? Oh, but
we already have metal detectors and full-body imagining to prevent that from
happening again. Fuck.

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nkurz
I accidentally ran a disassembled shotgun through a checkpoint at IAD. I'd
filled out all the appropriate forms for declaring a gun (unloaded) in checked
luggage, and couldn't figure out who to hand them to. This was at a period of
high alert, so they were screening even checked bags. I finally got someone's
attention, and he waved me to put my bags on the conveyor and walk through.

The bag went through without comment, and they were rather surprised and
embarrassed when after that asked them what I was supposed to do with the
declaration. Should we take from this that security is all a sham? No,
probably not, but I wouldn't put much faith in simply adding mandatory checked
bag X-rays.

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pavel_lishin
> Advanced imaging technology and more stringent pat downs have also since
> been implemented.

Which wouldn't have found the gun that was in a _bag_.

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maeon3
Flying is one of the safest things you can ever do, safer than showering,
safer than walking down a busy sidewalk, safer than going to McDonalds to eat
a burger.

We don't need anal probes and full body cat scans to make extremely safe
things even more safe.

If you want to decrease your risk of dying from various causes, spending your
entire life aboard public aircraft would be a wise thing to do.

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younata
looking at what's in a McDonalds burger, their (there?) are a LOT more things
you can do that is safer than eating one of their burgers.

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maeon3
I wonder what the odds are of dying a few hours after eating a final burger
(stroke, heart failure, etc) verses dying a few hours after boarding a doomed
aircraft. I recall the odds of dying are like one in 15 million for first
world airlines, I have a hard time believing that less than 1 in 15 million
people who eat a burger die because of that burger.

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kbob
If you eat three meals a day, you've got a good chance of dying a few hours
after a meal. What are you arguing?

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maeon3
I'm arguing that the obsession with making flying safer and safer by strip
searching people is insane.

