FGF E-Package
The Confederate Lawyer
May 31, 2012
The Blue Shirts
by Charles G. Mills
fitzgerald griffin foundation
GLEN COVE, NY — Recently, in the space of one week, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) did the following:
• fired four agents for taking bribes to allow suitcases filled with drugs to be brought on planes.
• put an employee to work without a prior background check (as is often the case), only to later discover that she had previously been fired as an airport screener.
• patted down a Congressman so hard it hurt him.
• pulled a seven-year-old girl off the boarding line to re-check her crutches and leg braces, causing her and her family to miss their flight.
Shortly after this eventful week, the TSA caused another family to miss a flight because a computer error had listed their 18-month-old baby as a terrorist. Wikipedia has posted several pages of complaints about similar conduct over the last several years at wikipedia.org.
A Cornell University study found that airport screening has increased the number of automobile accident deaths by causing people to travel more by car and less by plane [Blalock, Garrick; Vrinda Kadiyali, Daniel H. Simon (February 10, 2005). ["The Impact of 9/11 on Road Fatalities: The Other Lives Lost to Terrorism". SSRN Electronic Journal. Other studies cited in Wikipedia agree.
The TSA, which employees 45,000 agents, is riddled with inefficiency. The TSA has a warehouse full of equipment it does not use, such as screening devices that became obsolete before they were deployed. Waiting for a recent flight, I observed three agents who came to the gate about an hour before boarding. As we finally boarded, they did a “random” check of some of the men’s briefcases. In contrast, San Francisco is the largest airport that does its own screening and that does not use the TSA. It operates much more inexpensively than the government agency and with fewer delays.
The screening now done by TSA was previously handled by a mixture of private and local government employees, including sheriffs’ deputies and police officers. Local airports have a far greater incentive to screen passengers efficiently than do employees of a massive bureaucracy.
Requests by local airports to return to the old system are routinely rejected by the TSA, with no reason given.The TSA is known for absurdities. We can take three ounces of toothpaste on board in a three-ounce tube, but we cannot take two ounces on board in a five-ounce tube. The TSA seems to have a peculiar obsession with shoes, liquids, and gels, because these have been used in attempts.
Fixing the TSA around the edges or privatizing airport screening might each help, but these are not real solutions. The solution is to rethink the whole screening process, which was originally designed to keep pistols off planes. This was an absurd idea. The Israelis, who run the safest airline in the world, are much more likely to keep bad people off their planes than pistols. We, in contrast, think that it is a denial of the equal protection of the law if we screen suspects more carefully than grandmothers, Congressmen, and two-year-olds. We send our National Guard troops into railroad stations with loaded pistols to prevent terrorism, but we will not allow them to carry pistols on planes.
Pistols in the hands of soldiers, Congressmen, or plain upstanding citizens make planes safer, not more dangerous. The 9/11 attack would not have succeeded if a few pistols had been on board. Moreover, there is no truth to the myth that pistols pose a serious threat of loss of cabin pressure.
The screening has added liquids, gels, and explosive shoes to the list with pistols. As long as we allow people whose religion tells them to kill Christians on our planes, they will think of new and innovative ways to hijack or blow up the planes. A few pistols in the right hands cannot eliminate this threat entirely, but they would help. Screening passengers for bad people rather than too much toothpaste is an essential first step. Prescreening passengers to bypass security should be easy, free of charge, and without fear of discrimination against suspect groups.
The loss of liberty and dignity at the airport does nothing to make flying safer.
The Confederate Lawyer archives
The Confederate Lawyer column is copyright © 2012 by Charles G. Mills and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, www.fgfBooks.com. All rights reserved.
Charles G. Mills is the Judge Advocate or general counsel for the New York State American Legion. He has forty years of experience in many trial and appellate courts and has published several articles about the law.
See his biographical sketch and additional columns here.
To sponsor the FGF E-Package, please send a tax-deductible donation to the:
Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation
344 Maple Avenue West, #281
Vienna, VA 22180
or donate online.
@ 2024 Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation