[QUOTE=msmith537]
Yes, the same people who will cry “why didn’t they do more to prevent it!” when a terrorist attack actually happens.
I’m tired of people who live in the suburbs and nth tier cities and fly once a year adding their two cents of what they think adequate security measure should be. Basic common sense tells you that you need to take more security precations with an airplane than a bus or train for the simple fact that you can’t simply pull the aircraft over and let everyone off. If that means you have to wait in line to make sure that some moron doesn’t bring something dangerous on board, so be it. I fly frequently and it’s not like it’s that big a deal to wait 10 minutes to go through security.
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When flying out of LAX or O’Hare, it’s not unusual to wait well over an hour. (I usually spend this wasted time thinking of all the ways I could readily defeat their systems, and I usually come up with three or four novel, workable ways every time.) I’ve actually been in line for over three hours at LAX, and the entire flight had to be delayed, no doubt resulting in cascading delays for successive flights. This isn’t a minor inconvenience; this is real cost, and when you sum up the figures it turns into billions of lost dollars every year, and financial reprecussions that filter down into other sectors.
Of course, losing a plane to a terrorist attack is also going to have significant reprecussions, financial and otherwise. However, you’ll note that the number of actual, successful terrorist attacks relative to the total number of flights is almost negligable, even prior to the September 11 attacks. The Taliban-backed terrorists who siezed those planes were grasping what we call “low hanging fruit”; i.e. it was an opportunity that barely skilled, moderately financed, highly motivated fanatics could act upon. The simple modification of cabin doors that secure from the cockpit (and keeping the doors closed by default) would have entirely prevented those attacks at minimal cost, and I regarded it–even long before the attacks–a stupid lapse of security that ready access to the flight deck was so easy for passengers. Airlines in other countries have long ago implemented procedures to prevent this kind of hijacking, and the fact that American carriers did not and were not required to do so is a gross miscalculation of judgement; fortunately, one that was easily rectified.
You’ll note that despite repeated appeals to eternal watchfulness “'cause the terrorists will most certainly try to strike again” and vague implications of terrorist actions forestalled by shadowy government agencies (which seem to me most likely rejected story ideas from 24) that there have been only a handful of small and mostly ineffectual attacks since then; even ones that did serious amounts of injury or destruction (Bali bombing, London Underground) were rare and apparently difficult for the terrorist organizations to repeat; nor were they really preventable by any security plans, extant or proposed.
And I live in the L.A. area, which is the third or fourth most likely target for a hypothetical large-scale terrorist attack. (According to the t.v., it’s actually the first, but that’s just because Kiefer Sutherland doesn’t want to commute to New York.) There’s basically nothing I can do to change that, short of moving. If The Terrorists [cue ominous theme music] decide to detonate a dirty bomb, poison the water system, or demolish the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center on Sunset Blvd., I’m just hosed. (Actually, if they blow up the Celebrity Center they might actually accrue some heartfelt good sentiment by the public at large, though they’d have to face the combined wrath of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, which is probably more than they’re prepared to take on.) Life is risk, and pretending that snooping through diaper bags and making people drop trousers in the middle of an airport is making anyone genuinely safer is a nonsense ploy primarily designed to condition people to maintaining a constant low level sense of anxiety and unquestionably accepting authority.
[QUOTE=mks57]
As far as I’m concerned, anyone who can legally carry a weapon on the ground should be able to do so on an aircraft.
[/QUOTE]
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you have no idea of what you speak of, here. A gunfight on a fully loaded, pressurized aircraft would be a bad day for everyone involved. Anyone who carries a concealed firearm in public is already carrying a great burden of responsibility; using one in those conditions without being more of a hazard to bystanders then the primary targets requires specialized training and ammunition. In short, this is a bad idea.
Stranger
