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Comment by llamaimperative | Hacker News Reader

TSA detected 6700+ firearms in 2023, 93% of which were loaded.

I like that people can’t accidentally bring a loaded gun onto my plane and are deterred from doing it on purpose.

A committed attacker can probably get by TSA, but a committed attacker will also likely flag other parts of the layered defense system that TSA is only one part of. The intelligence apparatus can and does flag specific threats to TSA, which is way better than FBI having to figure out ad-hoc how to screen millions of travelers whenever they think there’s a specific credible risk.

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https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-underco...

I have no reason to believe this got any better since then. So they accidentally caught a bunch of dudes who don’t read the fine print. Any determined adversary would have no issue at all bringing guns or explosives onboard whether or not I “remove my shoes and put my laptop in the bin”. It’s only a matter of time. Don’t like it? Stop funding genocide in the Middle East.

Did you reply to the wrong comment?

I don't know if you're familiar with guns, but you actually don't have to be a sophisticated committed ideologue to be dangerous with them. Especially on an airplane.

You ever seen a drunk asshole on a plane? Now add a couple loaded firearms to the mix, held by drunk person or by person annoyed by drunk person. Sufficiently dangerous for me to be thankful TSA intercepts thousands of them every year.

> Any determined adversary would have no issue at all bringing guns or explosives onboard whether or not I “remove my shoes and put my laptop in the bin”. It’s only a matter of time. Don’t like it? Stop funding genocide in the Middle East.

Yet, stunningly, the number of times someone has brought a bomb or a gun through TSA and committed a terrorist act with it since 9/11 is exactly zero times.

This is the same nonsense argument that people use in favor of abolishing police. "They only catch some crime and keep some criminals off the streets, not all of it" is a totally nonsensical reason to get rid of the institution entirely.

I will leave it to the sibling comment or to describe in detail how wrong you are about guns specifically.

This is a logical fallacy. Bring unable to stop 100% of something doesn't mean you should give up. If they're stopping over 90% that's reason to keep going.

The same argument can be used for almost any risk reduction techniques, including air bags and seatbelts, and it's wrong there too.

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