TSA union calls for armed guards at every checkpoint

The next logical step is to expand the scope of the TSA&#x27;s security—put full body scanners at the airport entrances rather than boarding gates. In the distant future, we can look forward to having periodic security checkpoints when we go out to get some lunch.<p>Not what the OP is talking about, but I hope the conversation doesn&#x27;t veer in this direction.<p>Is this the first TSA casualty? Perhaps these odds aren&#x27;t so bad after all. Maybe we don&#x27;t need to overreact and restructure all security just yet.

Well of course, that&#x27;s definitely what we need guns, guns, more guns, everywhere.<p>So now when the TSA makes a mistake, it will be a deadly mistake.<p>Or why even bring a gun to the airport when you can just take one from a poorly trained TSA agent.<p>Or we could dissolve the TSA and homeland security theater while we are at it.

Just for some inside baseball American politics, when the TSA was set up, the deal was that the Republicans wanted to be seen doing something about law and order and the Democrats wanted a huge new block of unionized civil service workers.<p>The interesting question is: which of these political rationales will hold and which won&#x27;t? Will there be a backlash against another union voice working in their own interests more than the flying public? (After all, nobody wants shootings at airports, why arm TSA workers and not, say, baggage clerks?) Will there be a backlash against the entire idea of the TSA as being necessary for safety?<p>My money says that neither of these will happen. Both rationales will hold up fine, and American airports will continue to look more and more like prison camps instead of places to celebrate our ability to freely travel. By having conflicting and complementary rationales for existence, no matter what happens, the overall response from the media and the political system will be &quot;We need more TSA&quot;

Note that a mass casualty event at a checkpoint, where hundreds of people are concentrated, standing around exposed, hasn&#x27;t prompted called to eliminate that structure for checkpoints.<p>That is, when the scenario I have seen predicted by security experts critical of the TSA comes true, the TSA makes no comment at all about the fact that they created this security problem in the first place.

How about <i>actual police officers</i>, instead of the Dominos Pizza Box Brigade we have now?

The next time you stand up for your dignity before the TSA, remember that there are armed guards ready to shoot.

I don&#x27;t think the TSA will rest until all of their &quot;agents&quot; are precisely the main character in the game &quot;Papers, Please.&quot;<p>Here&#x27;s what I gathered from the article. In a busy airport like LAX, only 5 people total were shot. The gunman had a note that he specifically targeted the TSA. Out of the 5, 3 were TSA and 2 civilians. If LAX was busy, or not even, it would stand to reason there were <i>far more</i> civilians he could&#x27;ve shot but didn&#x27;t. Why he even bothered with those 2 is anyone&#x27;s guess, at least according to the note he left.<p>The subject of the note can be read one of 2+ ways. Either he&#x27;s batshit insane and none of his reasoning is sound or he&#x27;s not quite insane and his reasoning pushed him to believe that killing people was for a beneficial good. People in general don&#x27;t really wake up wanting to murder, nor do they want to murder a very specific target. Whatever his justification to himself, it was enough to spur him into action. Premeditated by the supposed fact that the gun was bought legally.<p>The acts surrounding this incident do not mirror real terror like the recent rise in school shootings, yet the TSA is clearly looking to illicit the same level of sympathy. I call bullshit. Is it egregious that one person lost their life? Sure. Is this an act of terrorism? That&#x27;s an extremely hard sell in light of the note he wrote. If anything he wanted to terrorize the TSA only, because its hard to believe he didn&#x27;t have a &quot;target rich environment&quot; of civilians in a busy airport like LAX. One could reason that any shooting is an act of terror but that notion never seemed to exist before 9&#x2F;11. People kill others with guns daily in this country, so what makes this any different?<p>Take this hypothetical: if the TSA didn&#x27;t exist, would this shooting have ever taken place? I say no. The TSA will never look at themselves as a source of FUD, propaganda, or terrorism but the reaction from this person shouldn&#x27;t be taken lightly, either. Yet it is. Instead of having clear reflection on how to mitigate this from happening again, they&#x27;re going in the direction of provoking it! What. The. Fuck. Are. These. People. Smoking? And no, I do not want any of the batshit insane in my pipe, please.

But who will guard the guards who are guarding the guards?

Wow. This is the same logic that got us to having the TSA to begin with.

Of course, normal human reaction. And of course, <i>nothing can go wrong</i> with a nervous &amp; not-so-well trained TSA agent with an armed guard at his beck and call at an airport-checkpoint; where people tend to be stressed out under already-existing conditions unrelated to TSA.<p>I&#x27;m looking at my crystal-ball. I&#x27;ll tell you what&#x27;s going to happen next. Someone, a minority I&#x27;m sure, will be killed for looking&#x2F;acting suspicious. Obama will give some kind of speech that we should all just learn to get along. Hateful comments will be all over the &#x27;net for a few weeks. Protests will happen, but will be halted because I&#x27;m sure protests are not okay at airports. So the protests will happen somewhere else. The TSA agent and&#x2F;or armed-guard will not be found guilty of murder, but he&#x27;ll quit his job because of all the hateful&#x2F;death-threats messages he gets. A 2nd tragic event will happen in an American airport involving TSA&#x2F;armed-guard. This 2nd incident will be much more serious because this time the victim won&#x27;t be a brown person; nobody cares about them anyways. It&#x27;ll be a white, Russian or Asian person. They&#x27;ll stop having armed guards after this 2nd incident. The TSA will be renamed or moved away from the checkpoint areas they are at now; to be right in front of the door to the jetway. But then, something bad will happen again, people will say it&#x27;s too crowded and panic-prone for that location to have TSA.... they&#x27;ll be moved back to the previous checkpoints, unarmed. This whole cycle will repeat or someone will just shutdown the TSA, like they should have done ......in the beginning[1]<p>1. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybRrbNjWW3k&amp;t=6m58s" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ybRrbNjWW3k&amp;t=6m58s</a>

To me, the real issue is, is this a frequent enough problem that really needs addressing. I don&#x27;t believe it is.

Who decided it was a good idea to let the TSA unionize?!

Every TSA checkpoint I&#x27;ve ever been through has had an armed police officer there. So what&#x27;s this &quot;call for armed guards&quot;?

It may not be a bad thing.<p>The security theater is a on downwards slope, and it has too much momentum to be slowed down, let alone be stopped or reversed.<p>Let it go faster. The sooner it crashes, the better.<p>--<p>Actually, I&#x27;m on the fence regarding this line of argument, but I think it had to be made, as a counterpoint to the backlash seen in the other comments.<p>When your adversary&#x27;s worst enemy is its own weight, you&#x27;re rarely in a good position.

Most of the comments here try to spin this story as anti-TSA, which is laughable. Fact is, a man with an assault rifle targeted a vulnerable spot at an airport. That man was <i>batshit insane</i>, which means that while today that man targets TSA agents, tomorrow that man could be suckered in by some other random propaganda pamphlet or web site.<p>If TSA didn&#x27;t exist, Mr. Violent Crazy Man simply takes up another cause and chooses another target, and without the TSA, he could could have taken down a plane in-flight, causing 300 deaths rather than one, and incalculable economic damage. Thank you, TSA, for limiting what such men can do. You are the front line of the crazy filter.

Great, mall cops with guns. I feel safer already.

Everyone else calls for the complete and immediate disbandment of the TSA.

Here&#x27;s an interesting counterpoint to this argument I read yesterday, from someone who worked in the air travel industry but not directly in security:<p><a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/01/opinion/hawk-dont-arm-tsa/index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;edition.cnn.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;01&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;hawk-dont-arm-tsa&#x2F;...</a>

I have an easier idea for these people&#x27;s safety: stop putting on the uniform of an organization that needs to be demolished.<p>How many cumulative travelers&#x27; lives have been lost waiting in line for their delusionary make-work theatre?

Security shouldn&#x27;t be a reaction to a singular event. You can&#x27;t defend against the lone insane attacker. Yet politics always demands instant (and likely poor) decisions.

When a mass shooting occurs at an school, nobody suggests it&#x27;s a good idea to have armed security at every school entrance. Why is this any different?

If this happens, it should be local police officers.

Why? Don&#x27;t they trust the armed police officers stationed at every checkpoint? You know, the ones that captured the shooter in LAX.

to people complaining about the existence of the TSA, why don&#x27;t you guys actually give it some thought. Before the TSA, there were differing standards across states&#x2F;cities&#x2F;airports concerning airport security. Now, everything has been unified under this single body.<p>This ends up being a double-edged sword. Easier for some scanner company to lobby one group rather than 50. But for us, we just need to convince one organisation to ease up (plus the FAA sometimes too). &quot;Dismantling&quot; the TSA won&#x27;t get rid of airport checkpoints no more than dismantling the IRS won&#x27;t get rid of taxes. Concentrating more on getting the TSA to create laxer policies will go a lot further than efforts to compeltely destroy the agency.<p>In any case, this is obviously the expected answer to the event, just like every school shooting leads to asking for more armed guards (even armed teachers sometimes).