TSA weighs airport gun ban in unsecured areas.
The Transportation Security Administration may allow airports to ban firearms from terminals, parking lots, roads and other airport areas where many states currently allow passengers to carry lethal weapons.
Airport officials and lawmakers are watching closely as the TSA weighs a request by Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to modify its security program to impose an airportwide ban on guns. It is the first such request to TSA from an airport.
“Any decisions we make that affect (Atlanta) could affect every other airport in the country,” TSA spokesman Christopher White said Thursday.
Federal law bars passengers from bringing weapons to or past airport checkpoints. But in many airports, state law allows passengers to carry guns and knives in unsecured areas such as a main terminal — often to airport officials’ dismay.
“I don’t really like the idea of people coming here with weapons and carrying them into terminals, but that’s their right as citizens of the state of Texas,” said Alan Black, public safety chief at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
So the TSA creates a huge, nationwide screwed up security theater system, then incrementally adds to it. First it was no more pocket knives and tools. Then it was no one past the check point without a boarding pass. Then you take your shoes off. Then it’s no liquids past the check point. (Exactly how do all those high priced water bottles get into the airport anyway?).
Not one of these steps has increased passenger safety, but we’re still stuck with them because some idiot at the TSA thought up a Hollywood movie plot.
I’d like to remind everyone that it wasn’t the box cutters that let the terrorists take over four airplanes on September 11th, 2001. It was a stupid policy that required pilots to do whatever the hijackers demanded.
Only two things have prevented a repeat of 9/11. Securing the flight deck doors, and taking the war to Afghanistan and Iraq. Everything the TSA has done is bullshit.
Now they want to ban guns outside the “secure zone”. Are they going to move the screening points to the airport doors? What about the parking lots? How will they know I have a gun in my truck? Will they search all the cars that enter the airport?
Where does the insanity stop?
