That’s why I think this smells like a stunt.
And I would question your honest ability to assess a dangerous situation without bringing racial prejudice into it.
Clearly it’s just as easy to sneak a gun on board as it is to sneak a box cutter. I think most people who get caught feel like the penalty is less for one than the other, so they won’t risk a gun.
I won’t claim that this idiot was guilty of logical thinking. But, one reason that another terrorist wouldn’t use the same thing is that a box cutter isn’t going to get you the same results on a commercial jet nowadays as it did in 2001.
Circumstantial.
You’re starting to stray into the realm of stereotypes and emotional reactions. In the two scenarios you described, neither is “more scary.” The fact remains that someone tried to carry a box cutter, a TSA prohibited item, onto an aircraft. Regardless of where they hid it; inside the Bible or hidden inside their rectum; the goal now is to establish intent and, from there, applicable punishment for the act itself.
What does racial prejudice have to with this case? Is carrying books on Islam a race?
A gun has more metal and is bigger and will be more likely to set off the metal detector and harder to hide.
A boxcutter with a plastic body has only a tiny amount of metal, the blade and a few screws.
It’s easy to imagine smuggling a tiny metal blade onto a plane.
I have no idea what this guy thought he was going to do with that boxcutter once he got it onto the plane, but the claim that he “forgot” he had a boxcutter in a hollowed out book is simply laughable.
It is still not a terrifying weapon. Based on that, a sharp carpenter’s pencil is a terrifying weapon because it can be thrust right through the eye into the brain.
The reason that the box cutter was an effective weapon in September, 2001 is that the people against whom it was used were not aware that the rules had been changed. For thirty years, airplane hijackings (particularly in the U.S.) had followed the pattern that a person threatened to harm passengers on a plane in order to get the pilot to re-direct to an alternative landing location. Then there would or would not be a stand-off on the runway, the passengers would eventually debark–otherwise unharmed, and life would go on. A threat to harm a passenger or crew member was enough to get everyone to go along with the scenario. By ramming the planes into buildings, the hijackers destroyed that scenario. (They even lost the advantage of that assumption on September 11, itself, when the passengers of Flight 93, realizing that the rules had changed, decided to rebel against the hijackers.)
A single guy with a single box cutter in 2007 is an object of scorn. He might be able to inflict some pain and damage on one or two persons, but he is going to be overwhelmed and potentially stomped if he actually attempts to take over a plane with that “weapon.”
At a bare minimum this guy needs a permanent, lifetime, irrevocable, “no fly” ban, as even if this is all a simple mistake he’s obviously too stupid to be allowed onto a plane. If he wants to go somewhere on vacation, he can fucking drive or take a cruise.
No, but in this “post-September 11 society,” it’s easy for many people to see “Islam” and have their mind conjur up all sorts of images. Clearly, someone can be Islamic without being a terrorist from the Middle East, but Americans are quite stubborn.
Change “racial prejudice” to “religious prejudice” if you want.
Quite often, it’s the shape of the object that draws suspicion to a bag. The TSA does not rely solely on metal detectors to get the job done; clearly, the majority of folks would have beeping bags every two seconds. Rather, the TSA is [supposed to be] well-trained to identify potential weapons based on shape, weight, what have you.
In some airports, yes. The effectiveness of airport screening is limited by those performing it. As most anyone who has flown in the past six years knows, the TSA’s competency varies widely from airport to airport, person to person. Some people get through with ice skates, some people are turned away. Some people get through with 20 oz sodas in plain view, some people have to dump their expensive makeup. I’m not trying to detract from the OP, but the technology and procedures are there – it’s just the employees who are just as likely to let a gun slip through as a boxcutter.
Right. Anyone trying to hijack a plane today is in for some serious opposition. I think it would be a damn fine way to kill yourself–death by hijacking.
I agree that this guy should be banned from flying.
How is that disagreeing? I’d be less wary of a known Muslim aboard a plane with a box cutter than I would of someone with a box cutter and with limited carry on space carrying four books about Islam and a Bible. Regardless, it seems you don’t disagree with me at all.
Were they carrying any books on how to fly planes?
You admit that a known Muslim carrying a box cutter on a plane is of greater concern than a man whose religion is unknown but you don’t admit that a man carrying four books on Islam should also cause greater concern?
It’s not at all clear. A gun is bulkier, and has a much more distinct shape than a thin, rectangular box cutter.
Bad analogy. I was a bouncer years ago and two other bouncers and I had to disarm an enraged man wielding a box cutter. Each moment was terrifying because the damage that could be done with one swipe was going through our heads. When it was over our hearts were beating like crazy and we were pretty damn shaken up, and we all have dealt with violence in the club before. I assure you that none of us would have been shaken in the least had he been wielding a pencil.
That didn’t work so well for Richard Reid. The passengers and flight attendants just overpowered him and tied him up; they didn’t kill him. He survived to be sentenced to several life sentences in a federal Supermax prison. I suppose if you wanted to spend the rest of your life in one of those prisons (maybe so you could get Qadgop as your doctor, though he doesn’t work in a Supermax prison AFAIK), trying to hijack a plane with a box cutter now might be one way to do it.
Different meanings of terrifying.
The purpose to a hijacker of a “terrifying” weapon is a weapon that will compel the plane’s crew and passengers to accept orders from the hijacker rather than resisting. Anyone who can be blocked into a corner of a plane with overhead luggage used as shields cannot compel the actions of others through fear.
I agree that a nutso waving a cutter would be a really scary event, but he would not be able to “terrify” me into letting him order me around (any more than your nut was able to get you and your fellow workers to stand back and wait him out until the police could be summoned).
It was a concession, not an admission. Absent other information, I don’t think a random Muslim with a box cutter is more scary than a random Christian or random atheist with a box cutter. (A random Jain would probably be less scary, but I don’t think they fly.) Given certain other facts, I might feel one or the other causes more concern. Since we don’t know much about the case, I didn’t want to get caught debating religious profiling, when this instance makes even less sense than that.
It’s been done before. A group of terrorist training for months on overpowering mostly ordinary citizens with box cutters won’t necessarily have their plan foiled by someone using overhead luggage for offense.
Again, it worked twice before. You might not be terrified into complying but with someone trained to deal with your type, you may end up bleeding on the floor in less than a second.
Is what religious bigotry? The arrest? He was carrying a concealed weapon on a plane. Are you thinking that someone who professed a different faith would not have been arrested?
He’s not asking if the arrest is religious bigotry; he’s asking if him thinking the case is more serious and the story about forgetting the box cutter in the book is less likely to be true based on the books he had on board makes him a religious bigot.
Oh, got it. Thanks.
I vote not religious bigotry.
True, but how is Tom terrified and bleeding in the airline cabin worse than Tom terrified and bleeding in some back alley somewhere?
If terrorists just want to cut people and terrify them, they can do so in a variety of places, not just airplanes. And they aren’t limited to cutting people, they can just shoot people at random.
The purpose of cutting people on the airplane would be to take control of the airplane, which can then be used as the terrorist sees fit…flown to Havanna, smashed into a building, whatever.
Except there’s no way the pilot is going to open the locked cockpit door, no matter how many passengers the terrorists threaten to cut. It’s not going to happen, even if they went down the seats and started cuttting every passenger’s throat in turn, because if the terrorist takes control of the plane then it’s likely that everyone onboard will be dead anyway, along with thousands of other people.
So sure, a guy with a boxcutter can probably kill several people, especially if he strikes without warning. And even if he gets stomped, he can inflict some pretty severe wounds, which might result in people bleeding to death even after the terrorist is subdued. And this accomplishes…what? If the terrorist just wants to cut people, why chose to do so on a plane? A lone terrorist with a gun bent on martyrdom could kill dozens of people in a shopping mall, or a school, far mor than the number of people he can kill on a plane with a boxcutter. I’m sure if a terrorist held a boxcutter to my throat, I’d be terrified into opening the cockpit doors for him. But a passenger or a flight attendant doesn’t have that power, only the people in the cockpit do. And the pilot doesn’t have a knife to his throat, the knife is to the throat of some random stranger. Since the pilot knows that the random stranger is sure to die if the terrorist takes the cockpit, it doesn’t take much guts for the pilot to refuse to open the door no matter how many throats the terrorist cuts.
Did I say something to make you believe I would think one is worse than the other?
I never implied that box cutters would be directly effective in getting the cockpit door opened, but as you go on to say, the box cutters are still useful tools in getting the job done. Is your post an attempt to refute something I said?
But what’s “the job”? Cutting random airline passengers?
If the job is cutting people, then boxcutters are an effective tool. If the job is taking control of the airplane, boxcutters are not an effective tool.
My only point is that a nut waving around a boxcutter on a plane is a dangerous threat, but is no more dangerous than a nut waving around a boxcutter in a movie theater.
Of course the job isn’t cutting random passengers; you already know this:
You agree that they will be effective tools in either getting to the cockpit or stopping others from interfering with terrorists working on getting through the cockpit door, no?
If not, should the airlines allow all box cutters and other sharp instruments because they’re ineffectual tools for hijacking?