While I agree with your sentiment, the TSA agents are not the ones to be packing heat. They are asking for more local police presence.

"The screeners, who earn up to $30,000 annually, have not requested to carry guns themselves, but they do want an armed security officer present at every checkpoint, Cox said."

Armed security officer is not the same as a police officer.

I'd prefer to see armed citizens myself.

There are already plenty of armed citizens in the US. If this incident follows precedent, gun sales will have spiked dramatically.

Those armed citizens are not allowed in airports by law. There's a reason airports, along with schools, post offices, the state of California, etc, are called 'victim disarmament zones' by the concealed-carry crowd.

I've heard that argument. For me, it breaks down in that it assumes there's a correlation between the number of people carrying guns, and the number of responsible people carrying guns who will actually react properly when something happens.

I've yet to hear of a lunatic trying to shoot up a police station, a gunshop, or a firing range - places where guns are prevalent. Also, Israel arms their teachers[1] and school shootings have 'magically' gone way down. I'd like to think that the deterrent effect would play a significant role in keeping our kids and ourselves safe, aka the "an armed society is a polite society" argument.

[1] - http://www.examiner.com/article/arming-teachers-worked-for-i...

Your examples are irrelevant because they're controlled environments - in a gun shop most of the guns are locked up behind bulletproof glass. The police make certain they're the only ones with guns inside a police station. And nobody would be stupid enough to start something in a place where people are practicing shooting targets with already loaded weapons.

The point about the teachers is a good one - though culturally and politically I don't know if that would work very well in the United States. But to be fair to your point, we would have to also allow the students to carry guns to protect themselves against the teachers, who now represent an oppressive and violent arm of the state after all, and we're down to the same problem - how does one tell the difference between a trustworthy, armed person and an untrustworthy armed person?

> Or we could dissolve the TSA and homeland security theater while we are at it.

excellent idea. i fucking hate the tsa and couldn't possibly give a shit about one of their ppl getting killed after all the bullshit i have had to go through just to travel in the US.

> i fucking hate the tsa and couldn't possibly give a shit about one of their ppl getting killed

I sincerely hope that someday you will be ashamed for writing this.

>> i fucking hate the tsa and couldn't possibly give a shit about one of their ppl getting killed >I sincerely hope that someday you will be ashamed for writing this.

i'm sure the tsa sheds a dramatic native american tear every time they hear about someone else getting injured or killed on the job. people die every day and the fact that it's a member of the tsa changes the general feeling of indifference into amusement because the tsa actively reduces the quality of my life on a regular basis.

if it was me that died and all you know is that i'm some member of a group that is generally shitty to you on a regular basis, i don't think you're going to be all emo about it. grow up

There's a huge difference between not feeling particularly emotionally upset by the fact of someone you don't know dying, and saying that you "couldn't possibly give a shit" about someone's death because the organization that employed that person has given you a hassle. It's true, I wouldn't feel particularly emotionally impacted by your death (people die every second). But, if you were intentionally murdered for belonging to a group that was "generally shitty" to me on a regular basis, I would still never say that I didn't "give a shit" about your murder.

I very much dislike the TSA and can't remember any positive experiences with them. Murdering TSA agents is absolutely wrong.