I think none of those gun owners had plans to use the gun at an airport or on a flight.
There's small amounts of evidence that "terrorists" moved to different approaches - the Inkjet cargo bombs, for example.
95%. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-u...
Even if they used some internal knowledge, everyone here should know the adages about security through obscurity. TSA checkpoints are clearly enormously vulnerable if they can get through 95% of the time.
Secondly, you'd have a bunch of incidents of idiots pulling their gun when they shouldn't have, which would lead to avoidable injuries, deaths, panic, etc.
TSA should screen for firearms with metal detectors and xray machines, its just all of the removing the shoes, body scans, laptop scans, banning liquids, and understaffing that are a problem.
By reporting this stuff they're actually making the case of how totally useless they are -- and how pointless and misguided the "find the weapon" school of security theater is.
This guy shot the pilots:
http://murderpedia.org/male.B/b/burke-david.htm
This guy stabbed one pilot to death before he was subdued:
http://murderpedia.org/male.N/n/nishizawa-yuji.htm
The stabbing occurred after he reported the security flaw he used to get the knife on board the plane. Previously checked baggage could be picked up after passing through security for another flight. He was able to simply take the knife out of a bag he had checked on a previous flight.
I'm guessing the number of weapons on U.S. planes that get by security run into the thousands every year. And before all the checks, probably the tens or hundreds of thousands per year.
Looks extremely rare. I mean really, really extremely rare. Handful of examples and roughly 9 million U.S. airline flights last year[1]
It'd be interesting to run some comparative statistics. I bet the odds show that you're safer with a plane full of gun owners, having their guns in holsters and loaded, than you are spending the same amount of time in each of those gun owners' homes.
Edit: better link
And no, folks, "half the top missing" isn't hyperbole.
Everyone in the USA has the right to bear arms, and a lot of them do. Result: huge murder rate.
Everyone in the rest of the world does not have the right to carry guns around the place. Result: much smaller murder rate.
I think we can infer that if everyone could take guns on planes then we'd have more people shooting guns on planes and hence more death on planes.
Going from that to stopping people from carrying pocket knives on planes is the bit that I think is suspect logic.
The rate of murders committed by folks legally carrying guns is low; the rate of murders committed by Americans using weapons other than firearms is high. It's almost as though Americans in general are more violent than people in many other parts of the world.
In summary, most law abiding gun owners in the U.S. don't commit homicide. Among whites, guns are most likely to be used for suicide.
Among blacks, guns are most likely to be used for homicide, and most of their victims are also black. In fact out of about 11,000 gun homicides per year, over 6000 are black-on-black shootings, mostly males 16-39, mostly urban ghetto gang members. Thus, less than 1% of the U.S. population commits over half the gun homicides (Hispanics have the next largest share).
If you control for the unfortunate murder rates in the ghetto areas, actually the per capita gun violence in the U.S. is almost the same as Canada and western Europe, maybe 1% higher but certainly not warranting the kind of stereotyping that inevitably accompanies any discussion about gun crime in America. Except for a few neighborhoods, most American cities today are as safe as, or actually safer than those of Europe.
You can argue with some validity that guns are too easy for gangs to obtain, but that's really separate from what we're talking about here which is lawful carry.
There's this really straightforward clear correlation between number of guns and amount of gun violence. Everyone else in the world gets this. Americans don't for some reason. I'm always curious why Americans don't get this. Y'all seem perfectly intelligent and reasonable otherwise.
No, OP complains that in the U.S. 'everyone' can carry firearms legally (not actually true: felons, wife-beaters, citizens of New Jersey & similar folks are prohibited from carrying firearms) and thus we have a high murder rate. I pointed out that the issue is not the legal right, since the folks committing the murders are not, for the most part, legally armed.
> I'm always curious why Americans don't get this.
There's this really straightforward clear correlation between arms-bearing and liberty (viz.: an unarmed man is fundamentally not free). Americans seem to get this; many other folks don't for some reason. I'm always curious why not.
It's what we do in a polite society; restrict our freedoms to respect the rights of others. I don't play music loudly on public transport for the same reason.
This is not idle rhetoric. Britain has much lower gun violence statistics than the US, but higher total violence statistics.
"Statistics show that in these states the crime rate fell (or did not rise) after the right-to-carry law became active (as of July, 2006)."
You're saying that the best response to crime is for people to shoot each other. Not better policing or a better criminal justice system, but random gun battles.
Is it any wonder that the murder rate so much higher in the USA than in other similarly-developed countries?
"you pissed me off. That's practically a crime. I should shoot you now. Oh look I'm carrying a gun. bang"
Honest people don't kill other people unless they feel their own lives are threatened. Criminals by definition do not follow the law, so by outlawing guns, only outlaws will have guns. What you effectively do is remove the gun from the honest person desiring to protect themselves, and arm the criminal with bad intent. The honest person is left defenseless.
Case in point: "Shooting incidents in London have almost doubled compared with the same period last year, prompting grave concerns that gun crime in some areas is out of control." [0]
Aren't guns illegal in England? How are people then getting shot, by guns, in a city where guns are illegal? Again, because criminals by definition don't follow the law and will find a way to get a gun regardless.
[0]: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/nov/03/london-gun-crime-s...
I think it's more likely someone would start shooting the passenger next to them for "taking too much space."
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11648758
- http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/16/southwest-air...
Not to mention it only takes one dimwit to not store his gun safely and accidentally fire it and someone (or everyone) dies.
I've never understood this argument that if everyone has guns then everyone is safer.
You actually used to be able to travel with firearms on planes (edit: as carry-on). And the above never occurred afaik.
I guess we could experiment. Suspend checks and see how many planes get blown up. If it's none, then de-fund the TSA. If it's more than none then sack whoever thought this stupid idea up.
So a white computer programmer from Seattle might be "safer" than a brown janitor from Dearborn?
And right there is your discrimination lawsuit. No government agency wants to expose themselves to that kind of challenge, even if they might win.
Instead, we prefer to use metrics, which we can mesure, aggregate and compile in neat reports. But metrics are a projection of a multidimensional situation onto a few dimensions, and hoping we picked the correct projection.
I'm all for collecting stats but I wish that was just a tool used in addition to a broader qualitative approach.
Try it for one year and I can almost guarantee, flights will be every bit as secure. Security theatre is not security.