How About a Little Inconvenience?

While I have always felt that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was an elaborate rouse designed to make us feel safe without actually making us safe yesterday’s Fort Lauderdale tragedy proved my point.

I joined the TSA pre-check program about a year ago.  For around $90 I received a background check and was allowed to keep my coat, shoes, and belt on as I passed through a special line that was always shorter.  It was one of life’s little pleasures.

Turns out it was a scam as yesterday’s tragedy proves.  For while I couldn’t fly with an eight once tube of tooth paste in my carry-on luggage here is what the Washington Post reported I could do:

Travelers are allowed to bring firearms with them to flights as long as the guns are unloaded, locked in a hard-sided container and in checked baggage, according to the Transportation Security Administration. Ammunition can be brought onto flights but also must be placed in checked baggage.1

Are you as puzzled as I am?

You can bring a gun and you can bring bullets in the same suitcase?

That’s crazy!

How about this simple rule?

You can bring a gun or you can bring bullets but you can’t bring both at the same time in the same piece of luggage.  You have to ship one or the other.  I know that would be inconvenient, but hey!

Or, how about you can put them in your checked luggage but you have to pick your bag up in a secure area from a uniformed officer who not only asks you for some I.D. but, if your eyes are rolling around in your head and you a babbling about R. James Woolsey Jr., doesn’t give you a gun but places a butterfly net over your head and makes you shout “Tamei! Tamei!” as you are carted away.

Again, I know that would be an inconvenience and some people who only looked like Mad-Eye Moody wouldn’t get their semi-automatic weapon back but this idea really just might save some lives.

How about we stop inconveniencing 90 years old who don’t have the strength to blow up a balloon and start inconveniencing those really are intent on blowing someone away?

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1.  Mark Berman, William Wan, and Sari Horwitz. "Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooting Suspect Had Visited FBI Office in Alaska Last Year." Washington Post. 6 January 2019. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fort-lauderdale-airport-shooting-suspect-had-visited-fbi-office-in-alaska-last-year/2017/01/06/d945b20a-d462-11e6-945a-76f69a399dd5_story.html?utm_term=.2a0c1112fa45]