There Should Be No Airport Security At All

This is probably the stupidest thread I've ever seen in all my time here. You probably think it's ok to take guns on the airplane because generally people are responsible right? Well guess what all it takes is one idiot to bring down a plane.

If it means getting to my destination in one piece then I'll go through all the security.

Originally posted by SuperSlovak
This is probably the stupidest thread I've ever seen in all my time here. You probably think it's ok to take guns on the airplane because generally people are responsible right? Well guess what all it takes is one idiot to bring down a plane.

If it means getting to my destination in one piece then I'll go through all the security.

Just something you may want to keep in mind. I found these numbers of great interest.
I also happen to agree with the OP. There was actually a time when going armed as a passenger on a commercial flight was of no concern.

The Odds of Airborne Terror
by Nate Silver @ 1:58 PM
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Not going to do any editorializing here; just going to do some non-fancy math. James Joyner asks:

There have been precisely three attempts over the last eight years to commit acts of terrorism aboard commercial aircraft. All of them clownishly inept and easily thwarted by the passengers. How many tens of thousands of flights have been incident free?
Let's expand Joyner's scope out to the past decade. Over the past decade, there have been, by my count, six attempted terrorist incidents on board a commercial airliner that landed in or departed from the United States: the four planes that were hijacked on 9/11, the shoe bomber incident in December 2001, and the NWA flight 253 incident on Christmas.

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics provides a wealth of statistical information on air traffic. For this exercise, I will look at both domestic flights within the US, and international flights whose origin or destination was within the United States. I will not look at flights that transported cargo and crew only. I will look at flights spanning the decade from October 1999 through September 2009 inclusive (the BTS does not yet have data available for the past couple of months).

Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.

These departures flew a collective 69,415,786,000 miles. That means there has been one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 mles flown. This distance is equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune.

Assuming an average airborne speed of 425 miles per hour, these airplanes were aloft for a total of 163,331,261 hours. Therefore, there has been one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne. This can also be expressed as one incident per 1,134,245 days airborne, or one incident per 3,105 years airborne.

There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

Again, no editorializing (for now). These are just the numbers.

www.fivethirtyeight.com...

www.bts.gov...


I'm relatively certain the creators of TSA know, or should know how utterly ridiculous it is to screen 6>60 year olds for no gain I can see. Of course we are being forced to jump on command. Perhaps that's their intent. Seems to be the only thing working rather well.

Originally posted by Chris McGee

Imagine his face when he finds out his flight's been delayed for 2 hours.

LMAO! Priceless! "For everything else there's MasterCard"! LMAO!

Originally posted by RestingInPieces

I agree.

They'd also never be able to stop a person from swallowing a pill, that after an hour turned them into an invincible monster capable of eating everyone on the plane, and then turning into a giant spaceship and flying away.

Yeah man, totally true, nothing could be done about it at all. They would need some kind of biological chemical x-ray machine to scan the chemical makeup of each individual. Another member here mentioned Ebola, that is so true, which means that airport security is just a front to take away the human rights of everyone.

If I was in a plane who had a terrorist on it, I would attack the terrorist, head butt him, break his neck, even bite his nose off or sink my teeth into his neck and rip out his jugular with my incisors, scrab his face apart, anything at all in order to save everyone. I dont care if I got killed in the process because the terrorist obviously wants to kill everyone onboard the plane, so I would sacrifice myself for the chance to save everyone because we would all be doomed anyway.

Originally posted by mnemeth1
I contend that post 9/11 air travel would be safer with no airport security at all.

Given the shoe and panty bomber events, we see the public will immediately attack the terrorists in question regardless of personal risk.

People know that if they don't act to stop the terrorists, the plane they are on will either be shot down or crashed into the ground. No negotiations will take place.

I also contend that damn near everyone would carry a gun with them when they got on a plane. - obviously a cabin full of armed passengers vs a handful of nut case terrorists is a no-brainer.

Also, the actual risk of death from a terrorist attack is only slightly higher than the risk of being struck dead by lightning.

If they really wanted to make air travel safer, they should simply get rid of the alcohol in passenger terminals and planes, since 99.9% of violence on flights is from belligerent drunks.

This would also ensure people who were armed on the plane would be sober to shoot straight and kill any threats.

Praise Mao.



Deaths over an 11-year period spanning 1995 through 2005

www.wired.com...

Driving off the road: 254,419
Falling: 146,542
Accidental poisoning: 140,327
Dying from work: 59,730
Walking down the street: 52,000.
Accidentally drowning: 38,302
Electrocution: 5,171
Terrorism: 3147




[edit on 8-1-2010 by mnemeth1]

/agreed

Thanks for the info.

WHAT IS WITH THE STATISTIC MATH DEBATE LETS GET SOMETHING STRAIGHT BULLETS GO THROUGH PLANES AND PEOPLE WHY WOULD ANYONE THINK ITS SAFER TO HAVE MORE BULLETS ON A PLANE! EVEN A PERSON WITH GOOD INTENTIONS WOULD POTENTIALLY MAKE A BAD SiTUATION REALLY REALLY BAD.
example!: passenger stands up says this is a high jacking when hes really just mental no bomb no gun.As a reaction some yahoo who thinks hes Charles Brawnson shoots at him fearing the worst depressurizes the plane and kills 300 people! way ta go good plan???
also now this thread has turned into a blend from thwarting terrorist activity to accident statistics they have nothting in common?
terrorist dont care if they die so they arent gonna be effected by a person who is armed their just gonna do their thing that much faster if you think logically and werent trying to provide transparent post statistics about lightning strikes how can you possibly think this is a good idea seriously the reason for security is cause people bring weapons bombs knives guns onto planes and do f.cked up sh.t.
Its not about you or THE NWO????? trying to take your rights airpot security is trying to save your life and your conclusion is to increase the risk?????
do me a favor please dont try and save me i dont need to be riddled with bullets over an arguement or scuffle.
WOW i cant even imagine how many innocent people would haver died if the underwear bomber had a gun too his bomb didnt work im sure he would have been more then obliged to shoot two or three flight attendant or the pilot or the plane instead come on dude everything has a place guns dont belong on planes remember number one fire arm statistics are that a gun owner is more likely to harm themselves or family(innocent people in their envirment then to resolve criminal conflict look it up if you love statitics so much.
lightning strikes
okay?????

I mention this far fetched idea because of how quickly our government wants to xray children, women and the traveling public and undermine our liberties and freedoms of privacy for a failed bombing attempt committed by a Muslim extremist. Whether he was assisted or had accomplices and or whether this is indeed a false flag operation we may never know. However; I see what would benefit the public and I want to discuss the following method to enhancing airline security and protecting the flying public in a non intrusive manner.

I would begin and institute a new approach to 24/7 surveillance for those that work for TSA. I would watch the TSA to ensure compliance to standards and procedures in dealing with the public. I would also require that all airlines use surveillance at every door to a plane and specifically inside the cabin of the airliner. The images would then be automatically transmitted while in flight to a ground operator at the airport and recorded like we do most surveillance recorded business and high risk areas of concern. If the cameras were placed in secret locations on board the airliner, we could see and hear what is going on inside the cabin before during and after any flight operation. We would not have to wait for the FBI to investigate nor would we be without any leads in the event the bombing was successful.

By seeing what is going on inside the cabin before, during and after the flight I feel we would have the means to investigate any possible breech of safety committed in the air and it would allow us to see just who is doing what prior to any plane being blown up by some Muslim extremist or by some covert intelligence types conducting false flag operations strictly for political purposes.

24/7 surveillance of all airline terminals and specifically at the boarding gate and within the cabin areas of the airliner is an idea that should be considered because it could be used to identify all terrorist and would afford those on the ground a glimpse of what actually happened while in flight should something happen that requires an investigation.

This may be a far fetched idea, but I for one wonder why this idea has not be accomplished before today. Surveillance is a non threatening measure that can provide quantifiable data to support its use within the cabin of all airliners. Surveillance is a better approach to dealing with terrorism than the way we currently do business and to be able to see what goes on inside the plane would also benefit the public's ability to solve criminal actions against the airlines and the flying public whenever the airlines abuse the passengers as they are so prone to doing. This new surveillance approach should already be in place, but since it isn't, we should demand a change to how airlines monitor the passengers and their own airline personnel. Its an idea that I feel is viable and would go far to aid with airport and airliner preemptive terrorism measures.

Originally posted by triplescorpio
WHAT IS WITH THE STATISTIC MATH DEBATE LETS GET SOMETHING STRAIGHT BULLETS GO THROUGH PLANES AND PEOPLE WHY WOULD ANYONE THINK ITS SAFER TO HAVE MORE BULLETS ON A PLANE! EVEN A PERSON WITH GOOD INTENTIONS WOULD POTENTIALLY MAKE A BAD SiTUATION REALLY REALLY BAD.
example!: passenger stands up says this is a high jacking when hes really just mental no bomb no gun.As a reaction some yahoo who thinks hes Charles Brawnson shoots at him fearing the worst depressurizes the plane and kills 300 people! way ta go good plan???
also now this thread has turned into a blend from thwarting terrorist activity to accident statistics they have nothting in common?
terrorist dont care if they die so they arent gonna be effected by a person who is armed their just gonna do their thing that much faster if you think logically and werent trying to provide transparent post statistics about lightning strikes how can you possibly think this is a good idea seriously the reason for security is cause people bring weapons bombs knives guns onto planes and do f.cked up sh.t.
Its not about you or THE NWO?????

trying to take your rights airpot security is trying to save your life and your conclusion is to increase the risk?????

do me a favor please dont try and save me i dont need to be riddled with bullets over an arguement or scuffle.
WOW i cant even imagine how many innocent people would haver died if the underwear bomber had a gun too his bomb didnt work im sure he would have been more then obliged to shoot two or three flight attendant or the pilot or the plane instead come on dude everything has a place guns dont belong on planes remember number one fire arm statistics are that a gun owner is more likely to harm themselves or family(innocent people in their envirment then to resolve criminal conflict look it up if you love statitics so much.
lightning strikes

okay?????

Lets do these "What if Scenarios" one at a time. A bullet as MOST people know will not result in explosive decompression.

"Thwarting terrorist activity" The astonishingly LOW probability "One chance in Twenty Seven Million Two Hundred Twenty One Thousand Eight Hundred seventy seven airborne hours "
Hardly seems worth the effort. These by the way are not accident statistics but Terrorist incidents. You may argue " Well if it only saves one life " or "What if you are that ONE "

Terrorists don't care if they die ! Really ? Look around and you will find that the majority of alleged terrorist attacks do not involve suicide as a byproduct of the process.

Guns , Knives , Tigers and Bears OH MY ! Up until recently anyone could board with a knife.
They then changed the blade length, then said no knives. As I have stated in many previous posts. Guns carried by everyday average regular guys on commercial carriers was perfectly legal AND I know you may find this hard to believe, but aircraft were not raining out of the sky.


"Wow I can't even imagine how many innocent people ..............Blah, Blah. Yet another "What if Scenario " I just love those !

And finally Dr Kellerman sponsored by the CDC provided you with this gem. 'A gun owner is more likely to harm themselves or a family member ..... Blah Blah.' If you would actually take the time to locate said study. You will see the OVERT flaw in his sampling . So completely biased he would not offer his alleged research for review by anyone. Don't just parrot what you hear amigo. Wikipedia is not considered research.

Finally finally-- The enormous amount of money wasted by DHS/TSA could be better spent if in fact you feel your life is threatened every time you board a plane. There is also the continued encroachment of civil liberty by TSA. Go look at the law suit filed by the ACLU as well as tons of case law ref the right to travel unencumbered by civil or government authority.
Really Really curious what your ultimate solution might entail. Thanks

Anyone who have a tendency to go berserk on the plane will go berserk and can cause some amount of damage no matter how much you screen. I can't help but wonder that such sophisticated system will be beaten by one ridiculous method. Because there are millions of people traveling across the world on daily basis. The air port security have to be 100% efficient and fail proof. All the terrorist have to do it to get it right for only once.
Someday we might have to pass in front of psychics before we get on plane. I mean, if that really works. duh !

The things we do for the comfort of the "sheeple."

get rid of alcohol on the plane?
absolutely not!

I need my alcohol man, otherwise my ears pop

I can't recall whether it is sweden or switzerland, but one of those two nations has the lowest crime rate due to the fact that all males are required to carry guns...I'm pretty sure it is switzerland... I'll find out for sure

Originally posted by mnemeth1

I also contend that damn near everyone would carry a gun with them when they got on a plane. - obviously a cabin full of armed passengers vs a handful of nut case terrorists is a no-brainer.

So when This terrorist or terrorists jump up from there seat all the passengers jump up and shoot him. Sounds like a plan so long as no one misses. Your in a pressureized tin can flying at approx 550mph between 30-50kft What would happen WHEN someone missed. A person that gets shot is not going to stand still and allow the 300 others on the plane to shoot them. Also they are going to shoot back. The plane still gets destroyed. Lets leave carrying the firearms to the air marshall.

If they really wanted to make air travel safer, they should simply get rid of the alcohol in passenger terminals and planes, since 99.9% of violence on flights is from belligerent drunks.

I agree with this but its not only the drunk passengers. If you allow people to carry guns on the plane now you have 300+ jumpy people looking at the one man sitting in traditial muslim garb. Heaven forbid if he's afraid of flying and he's looking nervous. The man wont make it off the plane alive.

Originally posted by mnemeth1

Originally posted by alien
I may agree...however, its what happens when the triggers start getting pulled that I'd be more terrified about.

Most gunfights I've seen aren't cool, calm and collected...

...its pretty much just *OMG! ARGH! BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM CLICK CLICK CLICK OMG HAVE I BEEN HIT?*

...certainly severely increased the very real risk of a stray bullets striking other passengers, striking walls of the plane...all manner of extremely bad outcomes.

It'd be like Reseviour Dogs at 30,000ft.

yeah it would be

it would be ugly, brutal, and people would die.

BUT - that is not any different than a terrorist successfully taking out a plane. At least this way the passengers have a chance.

The whole "airplane" thing is ridiculous too. If I was a terrorist, I would simply blow up a bus, a train, or walk into a terminal and unload with an automatic rifle.

Why bother jumping through 20 thousand hoops?

If I was a suicide bomber, I would put the bomb in my check in luggage, no chance to stop me there.

This whole business about airport security is ridiculous...

I'm not sure I agree with the idea about all passengers being armed on every flight, but I agree that airport security is a bad joke and that it probably does NOTHING to ensure the safety of the passengers. Does any one have a statistic on how many attempted terrorist attacks were thwarted due to the ever-watchful eye of the TSA? Anyone have a statistic on how many nail clippers and beard-trimming scissors and Bic lighters were confiscated?

Considering the TSA's failure to find nearly any passengers with terroristic intent, and given that the 9-11 terrorists were known and allowed to board their flights (if there were any and they did board, that is), and keeping in mind that people within the government took part in the staging of those murderous attacks, how can anyone believe they are safer with all the "enhanced security?"

That said, I think we're all missing the point about what airport security is REALLY about. It should be obvious to everyone that elements within the government at all levels--from the office of the President to your local county sheriff--are involved in all kinds of clandestine illegal operations: money laundering, drug smuggling and sales, etc. (OK, maybe Obama isn't actively involed in these pursuits, but you can bet the Bush and Clinton regimes were.) And the government, at least since the Kennedy coup, hates competition by small, unknown and therefore unpredictable, independent operations.

Prior to 9-11--and I'm not suggesting that this is a reason for the false-flag operation, just a side-effect--the easiest way to smuggle anything smaller than a breadbox across state lines, be it drugs, jewels, illicit cash, or computer chips, was to hide it on your person or in your luggage, board a commercial flight, and a few hours later you could hop off at your destination, safe and sound and with your contraband intact.

Now I haven't flown for several years, but the last time I did I watched who got pulled out of line for extra security checks. The two groups that I saw getting special treatment were overweight businessmen and little old ladies. Can you imagine two types of people less likely to be involved in a terrorist activity of any kind? But these two groups are among the most likely to be smuggling or "muling" contraband across the country.

Now things may have changed in the intervening years since my last cross-country flight, I don't know. But I thought it really strange that no one of middle-eastern descent was getting any extra attention at all. What types of people have YOU noticed getting special security treatment at airports?

[edit for grammar]

[edit on 1/13/10 by without_prejudice]

reply to post by dazbog


dazbog, great research.

It just backs up what I was saying earlier.

Spending trillions upon trillions to thwart "terrorism", invading two countries, and allowing ourselves to be virtually strip searched to prevent something that is less likely than being killed by lightning is insanity.

People are ALWAYS safer when the public is armed.

In fact I think if they wanted to mandate something, they should mandate that all passengers must carry a gun in order to get on a plane! hahaha that would stop terrorism dead in its tracks.





[edit on 13-1-2010 by mnemeth1]