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Comment by etaioinshrdlu | Hacker News Reader

I'm not convinced the TSA is needed to stop terrorism, but it probably helps a good deal with protecting passengers from ordinary psychotic Americans, of which there seem to be a significant increase over the last 20 or so years.

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I've watched enough YouTube videos, I don't think it's working.

Last year TSA intercepted almost seven thousand firearms at security checkpoints, 93% of which were loaded. So take all those crazy people, then add firearms into their vicinity, or a firearm into the hands of a well-meaning but panicking co-passenger now trying to "secure" a crowd of 300 people 30,000 feet in the air.

Here's a brief article I found about this. They talked to a former security director at LAX who says...

“The majority of folks” who are found with firearms “are what we call low-risk passengers,” Jeffries said. “These are your more frequent travelers. They’re the ones usually in PreCheck. I don’t think there’s any malicious intent. The number one thing that we would hear out there, and I’m sure it still stands to this day, is, ‘I forgot it was in my bag.’”

This maybe more a reflection of how many people in the US own guns and less about people intending to stage some kind of shootout at the airport.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/nation-world/2024/03/03/did-ts...

That's believeable, but if one bad guy gets onto a plane with a gun, it's getting hijacked. I can buy the "good guy with a gun" thing in other settings, but not on a plane.

I agree, which is why I included the fact that “good guy with gun” is also a gigantic fucking problem on an aircraft.

Drunk guy with gun is a huge problem.

Sleep-deprived guy with gun is a huge problem.

So TSA creates these unnecessarily long lines and stressful conditions, and some of the people in those lines have guns? Only a matter of time before that ends very badly.

What

Ordinary psychotic Americans who get upset at me if I ask if I need to take my computer out and put it in a bin? Not sure it’s doing a good job at that.

Not too long ago I got yelled at for leaving my laptop in bag, because the TSA agent was telling everyone to leave them in, but that was only for the line one over from me.

Same, except I was TSA precheck and in the separate line for it.

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