Comment by nfoz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nfoz | Hacker News Reader

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I agreed with you more before this post. Let's consider the advantages of centralization:

(1) A single agency can have within its mandate, expertise, and budget the security apparatus, which requires full-stack authority: airport design and administration, customs officials, airlines, planes, luggage, etc. The airlines can focus on the task they actually want to perform and are qualified to perform, whereas the one agency responsible for security can be audited and held accountable for that task as a unit.

(2) Customers cannot purchase less security. This is an advantage. It is nonsense for a customer to walk openly onto an aircraft carrying a rifle.

I think "airport security" has much less to do with passenger security than the risks inherent with allowing planes to fly through our skies. 9/11 is a clear example that many more people than the passengers of the flight can be affected via air-terrorism. This is why planes are controlled.

I'm not opposed to that control; I just marvel at how awful a job the U.S. government does at determing the cost/convenience/effectiveness tradeoffs. In my experience in the United States, this seems to be a systemic problem with governmentally-administered services that does not seem to exist so much in other governments.

There aren't many airlines, and I expect the overwhelming majority of consumers would consistently purchase the cheapest option. If airlines are the agency entrusted with safe flight, this makes everyone less safe. Rather, airport and flight security seems better serviced as an airport-surcharge or tax. What's missing is effective, accountable security provided by experts that we trust. I don't know why that isn't something we can solve.

> It is nonsense for a customer to walk openly onto an aircraft carrying a rifle.

I'm not sure that I agree. Prior to metal detectors and airport security here in the US plenty of guns were carried on planes and very few bad outcomes were the result. I've heard of planes getting hijacked and going to Cuba but nothing in the way of mass murders on airplanes.

I wish that instead of just stating this as a fact that you had argued it in some way. For point 1 you gave reasoning. For point 2 you just said "this is true" and stopped.

If you had said something like "air is necessary for life" yeah sure, I won't belabor that point. It's scientifically verifiable at least for humans.

But when the parent was posting "I wish people could just carry rifles and it not be a big deal" it's clear that your position is more of an opinion than a fact. You might consider it a fact, but you're replying to glenra who quite obviously doesn't agree.

> I've heard of planes getting hijacked and going to Cuba but nothing in the way of mass murders on airplanes.

Now you have:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Air_Lines_Flight_773

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Southwest_Airlines_Flig...

While these incidents are tragic, two incidents in the span 50 years of passenger aviation since WW2 don't seem like a big problem.

More people have been killed by lunatics while going to church without churches imposing a security theatre on attendees.

That was an response to the previous poster's incorrect observation about hearing "nothing in the way of mass murders on airplanes."

It appears that you incorrectly interpreted it as a complete list, as you concluded that only two incidents have occurred. http://listverse.com/2014/03/26/10-people-who-committed-murd... gives other examples of people who have committed mass murder on an airplane, including http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Airlines_Flight_11 (as a consequence of a suicide-by-bomb insurance fraud).

Also, the context was "mass murders on airplanes." Mass murder means typically 4 or more deaths. I have found many murders which took place at churches in the US [1] and ending up with one or two death. However, I haven't haven't found much in the way of mass murders of the sort that is supposed to be identified by security theater measures.

[1] If we go outside of the US then there are certainly metal detectors at some synagogues, bomb detectors at Mecca’s Holy Mosque, etc.

Over the decades of following online discussions, I'm growing ever more irritated at pedantic declarations of wrongness by countering reasonable generalizations with obscure/rare exceptions. Yes, out of the total vast number of commercial "airbus" flights ever, a minuscule number have suffered such incidents; likewise, a tiny number of holy sites are secured due to extreme attraction of violent nutjobs; taken in context both in absolute percentage of instances and in this being a casual discussion involving short comments of understandably less than peer-reviewed encyclopedic thoroughness, we don't have to spend time arguing minute absolutes.

I appreciate your comment. I should have been clear to separate my opinion that "availability of rifles on planes make them less safe" away from the argument that "less-safe planes should not be a passenger choice because the harm caused by the lax security is commit against non-passengers as well".

A pretty common argument around the pro-gun community is that removing guns from a specific area (schools, movie theaters, airlines) makes those places a prime target for mass shootings/terrorism -- the attacker knows that the area is gun-free and that, if he can get his own weapons into the area, he can't be (easily) challenged.

I'm not entirely sure if this is true or not, but it seems accurate -- have there been mass shootings in areas before they declared "gun-free zones?" Anyways, my point wasn't to argue for or against this, just that it seemed relevant to your comment -- you say that there were no issues when we used to let people just walk on planes with their guns, but once we started banning them, we started having things like 9/11.

As a frequent pro-gunner, the argument as I see it is more that if you want a gun-free zone that might actually be safer, then you need the whole airport-style rigmarole - metal detectors and armed security at every entrance, everybody entering gets their bodies and bags scanned or searched until you can positively verify that there aren't any guns, carefully designed walls, fences, and doors to make sure that nobody ever gets through anywhere but the official entrances with security, etc.

Putting up a sign saying gun-free zone at a place with no security makes things less safe, since it can only deter people who would never commit a crime anyways.

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