I have no idea if this is true, but let's assume it is.
So what? How does that prevent TSA's Office of Public Relations from following up with law enforcement after the fact? Is there some law of which I'm unaware that prevents the TSA from asking the local PD for statistics about this sort of thing?
Co-ordinating with a variety of different law enforcement departments, in different states, with different laws, makes is a bit less easy.
> I have no idea if this is true, but let's assume it is.
It's something that TSA claim. I posted the URL and a quote earlier in the thread. Here it is again. (http://blog.tsa.gov/2013/07/tsa-week-in-review-30-firearms.h...)
> Just because we find a prohibited item on an individual does not mean they had bad intentions, that's for the law enforcement officer to decide. In many cases, people simply forgot they had these items.
As I understand it TSA only do the finding of the guns and it's local law enforcement who does the rest. So TSA have no idea about who's allowed to carry the weapon or not.
I agree that these are just careless or forgetful people (or perhaps people making a point about their right to etc etc) and not terrorists.
> This would be a very easy statistic to publish, too (only 10% of the people we stopped were even licensed to carry a handgun!), but since I haven't seen that statistic advertised, I would presume they find most of the stopped citizens to be guilty only of carelessness.
I really hope that careless people are not being fined, or if they are it's only small. I also really hope that someone, somewhere, with a solid stats background, is collecting and studying the numbers and giving advice to law makers. Because spending all that time and money on something that's pointless would be very very frustrating. I want to know what the future-people will say about it. What will the 2063 tenth-graders write about it?