Airline Passenger Walked Past Security With a Loaded Gun Magazine (apnews.com) 171
An airline passenger "passed a security checkpoint with a loaded gun magazine," reports the Associated Press, citing information from an airport duty manager:
Bob Rotiski said the passenger who apparently had visited a shooting range packed a loaded magazine in his carry-on bag. He said an officer identified the magazine during security screening, but the wrong bag was pulled from the line. By that time, the passenger had already left the checkpoint with the bag containing the magazine....
Security lines were closed and flights were temporarily grounded at a San Francisco International Airport terminal...for nearly an hour, and United Airline flights out of Terminal 3 were grounded Saturday morning as TSA officers looked for the passenger.
"Rotiski said the lines reopened after officers located the passenger and brought him back for re-screening."
Security lines were closed and flights were temporarily grounded at a San Francisco International Airport terminal...for nearly an hour, and United Airline flights out of Terminal 3 were grounded Saturday morning as TSA officers looked for the passenger.
"Rotiski said the lines reopened after officers located the passenger and brought him back for re-screening."
Theater (Score:5, Insightful)
Ain't nothing more entertaining than the play that is security theater.
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Well, at least as long as you are not a passenger waiting for a flight.
Re:Theater (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine the carnage if that guy decided to start throwing cartridges at people!
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That's not what I meant. But in a security fuckup all planes are grounded until it is resolved.
Re: Theater (Score:2, Insightful)
This kind of scenario is quite rare. The vast majority of breaches take place without anyone ever realising.
Re:Theater (Score:4, Insightful)
Or the reality TV that is politics.
No the system actually worked here (Score:5, Insightful)
1. They did identify the clip
2. But they searched the wrong bag.
WOuld you, as a hijacker, think that was a great way to smuggle in a gun? No. while (2) happened it's a low probability event. Not something you would count on.
Thus as a deterrent for overt attacks this is worked. Not saying the process can't somehow be subverted in some other way but this particular example is not a good one to point at and yell "security theater".
Re: No the system actually worked here (Score:2)
They also realized their mistake, grounded the plane, and tracked him down. So it sounds like the process worked.
Re: No the system actually worked here (Score:5, Insightful)
Protected the public from nothing. Wasted time and money. Job well done.
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>"Protected the public from nothing. Wasted time and money. Job well done."
+1 exactly
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Protected the public from nothing. Wasted time and money. Job well done.
This is by far not nothing. Ever heard of a zip gun? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm The movie "Munich" has a perfect example where a zip gun is disguised as a bicycle pump.
It would be trivial to get a pipe through diguised as a cane or anything else that will contain and direct the firing of ammunition to where the shooter is intended. Combine that with the threat of multiple people working together and the ammunition could have been handed off to another party, I think the right call was
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This is by far not nothing. Ever heard of a zip gun?
Yep. My dad and his buddies used to make them back in the 1930s. They're slow, unreliable, easy to spot on an airplane, and as likely to kill the shooter as whomever he's aiming at.
And, of course, on an airplane, you'd only get one shot (passengers would take you down while you try to reload--assuming they don't do it far earlier). The best you could hope for is shooting a hole through a window (which, depending on caliber, might not even happen.) This assumes that a person could A) assemble the parts o
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The best you could hope for is shooting a hole through a window
No, the best you could hope for is just the threat of shooting a flight attendant gets the pilot to divert or open the door and your associate takes control of the aircraft.
Likely, you shoot someone, and your associate then covers the rest with his zip gun while you reload.
Worst is you kill someone and then get taken down. But you've still killed someone, you'll be headline news, and you'll scare people out of flying. This is a major goal of terrorists.
Which of those three results is "good" for the pub
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And some put fake security above all else. What was he going to DO with a matgazine? TSA again burned a pile of other people's money for no gain in safety.
Re: No the system actually worked here (Score:1)
Actually the cartridges are the more dangerous part. Plenty easy to make an undetectable polymer firearm, much harder to do the same for ammo.
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Easier still to make an ABS stiletto and hide it inside a hair brush.
Less likely to blow up in your hand as well.
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Less likely to blow up in your hand as well.
You know, there are terrorists who strap bombs to themselves and deliberately blow themselves up. I don't think the danger of a zip gun blowing up in their hand is going to stop someone like that.
Easier still to make an ABS stiletto and hide it inside a hair brush.
Yeah, because so many more people will be scared by what amounts to a plastic letter opener than by a zip gun. Sure.
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I'll bet more people would recognize a stiletto as a dangerous weapon (especially if it's held to someone's throat) than a zip gun.
If the gun blows up in your hand, mission fails. I'm pretty sure they care about that.
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Is it? What if you used compressed air instead of gunpower to pass the sniff test and some other high resistance material other than metal on the slugs?
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The answer is to try not to screw up 2 or 3 times within a critical window.
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The TSA is security theater, though. From a year and a half ago:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-operation-us-airports/story?id=51022188
The TSA's tactics does not deter any would be wrong-doer, and inconveniences everyone. The shoe bomber and the underwear bomber plots, for example, were uncovered despite of the TSA, not because of them. The additional screening were implemented after the fact, which further suggests it's all security theater.
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Oh no, you said clip instead of magazine! That invalidates your entire argument!
... and it's not a gun (Score:3)
On top of all that, it's not a gun.
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A gun is just a tube, a few rubberbands, and a small nail. The part that is hard to build anywhere, and is the most important part, is the ammunition.
If your gun is that primitive, then why not have it be a black powder weapon that shoots balls? Then your ammo is just anything spherical and closely-sized. Flintlocks aren't even considered weapons in kit form, you can order them right through the mail direct to your door.
Muzzleloader is what I've built (Score:2)
When I was going to build a primitive gun, I did a muzzleloader. I made my black powder from scratch, starting with wood.
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And percussive caps... Unless you want a flintlock? The reality is that a firearm can be disassembled to the point where the pieces are unrecognizable (I know, I have many of them).
I've got several, too. They might be unrecognizable to an untrained [read: typical] TSA agent, but no semi-automatic pistol's pieces break down to anything not immediately recognizable to anyone who has cleaned a gun before. So why not a flintlock?
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If your gun is that primitive, then why not have it be a black powder weapon that shoots balls?
For the same reason that cartridges replaced black powder weapons in general: convenience.
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For the same reason that cartridges replaced black powder weapons in general: convenience.
Powder and ball wrapped in paper is called...? [wikipedia.org]
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Powder and ball wrapped in paper is called..
You know very well that comparing black powder to cartridges is not referring to black powder "paper cartridges", and that the "cartridges" in this discussion isn't.
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You know very well that comparing black powder to cartridges is not referring to black powder "paper cartridges", and that the "cartridges" in this discussion isn't.
They do the same job, albeit one much better than the other. That's why they have the same name.
Re:No the system actually worked here (Score:5, Insightful)
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I recently took a trip to the UK, and their airport security system would have prevented this particular mistake. At Heathrow, there are two conveyor belts past the scanner, and the person viewing the scanned images can send the item to the cleared belt or the belt for further inspection. Absent this system, the TSA procedure should have been to stop the belt completely until the scanning person points out that item for further inspection.
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With their success rate for finding shit for every mag they find 4 make it through. So to say the system works is pretty moronic. That would be like saying that a fire suppression system that goes off for 1 out of 5 fires is a working system.
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The real trouble is finding 1,000 out of 10 guns.
False positives. It's a pain.
Re: Theater (Score:2, Funny)
It's not theater. TSA takes this stuff very seriously. It's sad people also don't take it seriously.
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if I point an unloaded gun at you, you will do what i say ( unless you realize it's unloaded). If I point bullets at you, you'll laugh at me.
If TSA doesn't have access to ticketing informatio (Score:2)
how did they figure out who this passenger was? timestamps on video correlated to the ticket scan at the TSA agent at the start of the security line? sounds like TSA can monitor every passenger that passes through any airport at any time.
And you thought China was bad.
-dk
Re: If TSA doesn't have access to ticketing inform (Score:1)
Try security camera aimed at the X-ray machine's output end; where people actually take their belongings back. Would be nice to know, in other situations, who the someone is that stole my laptop. In this situation, they know which bag they really wanted (an off by one error) and saw who took it.
Re: If TSA doesn't have access to ticketing inform (Score:2)
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Ain't nothing more entertaining than the play that is security theater.
LOL.. Ain't that the truth. The TSA is basically "feel good" theater that pretends they are making you more secure. Any determined attacker is not stopped by their efforts.
The only real way to do security in airports is to do things that TSA simply cannot do, profile, run background checks on everybody and making sure to positively ID everybody. Americans wouldn't stand for such invasive searching and as a result, the TSA can only put on a show.
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>"Ain't that the truth. The TSA is basically "feel good" theater that pretends they are making you more secure. Any determined attacker is not stopped by their efforts."
Yet they will still cost the tax payers billions and piss us all off with tremendous inconvenience in the process.
>"The only real way to do security in airports is to do things that TSA simply cannot do[...]Americans wouldn't stand for such invasive searching"
We can hope they [we] will continue to not stand for it, too. But I fear tho
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The funny thing is that what a terrorist wants is a large collection of people, all crowded together, in a place where no security checks occur.
Like, you know, the queue for the security checks.
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>"The funny thing is that what a terrorist wants is a large collection of people, all crowded together, in a place where no security checks occur. Like, you know, the queue for the security checks."
Yep. Criminals and terrorists also love so-called "gun-free" zones for the same reason- very low chance of anyone fighting back (because the law-abiding "good" people are stripped of their arms but not the "bad" people), sensitive area, lots of people and often children.
Re: FUD (Score:1)
You know how I can tell you are white?
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You know how I can tell you are a dumb fucking woketard?
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We know you are white because you called the US justice system "generally trustworthy". The only time the US justice system is generally trustworthy is if you are white, and appear to be above the poverty line. Also helps if you look like you might be well connected.
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If your last sentence is true, I hereby opt out of "actual security".
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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This.
CaptainDork's Corollary: "Americans have the right to keep and bear arms, but they don't have the right to use them."
Re: FUD (Score:1, Insightful)
Now, if neither of us had a gun in the first place, we would both still be alive.
No. The larger, stronger person more skilled in hand to hand combat would be alive. Your statement ignores thousands of years of history which clearly identifies people killing each other before guns came along.
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You're one of those people who believe that the preamble in the 2A makes the right limited and conditional.. Fortunately, you are dead wrong.
DEAD wrong.
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Are you in your home as mentioned in the 2008 Supreme Court Heller self-defence decision? If not, are you part of a well regulated militia?
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The main finding ot Heller was that the 2A describes an "individual right", not some kind of state-sponsored organizational right. The framers specifically said that the only individuals who might be excluded were "some Government officials". It's easy to go back and read what the intentions and meanings of the words were in their historical context. Including "shall not be infringed". Gun control is purely a modern invention, and most gun control rhetoric is simply nonsense.
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Would poison gas pass as an arm as it is illegal in a militia setting unlike most weapons.
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Would poison gas pass as an arm as it is illegal in a militia setting unlike most weapons.
Not sure where you get this "militia setting" idea; are you referring to the fact
that international "law" has banned poison gas? In general, the idea of the
2A was that the individuals should have the same capability as the army,
because that's who they might have to fight in the next revolution.
(And of course the usual deterrent effect is in play here.)
They had weapons at the time that might surprise you, including high
rate of fire guns, and of course they had cannons and so forth.
In any event is the princ
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Yes, I'm referring to poison gas being banned in international law (treaty) and that the preamble was to make it clear that the 2nd was as much about the militia as the usual reasons to bear arms (Bill of Rights of 1689 only gave the right to bear arms for self defence), which leads to the idea that the arms allowed are similar to the standing armies arms. A wide category but not unlimited.
Why do you seek to disarm the powerless (Score:1)
if neither of us had a gun in the first place, we would both still be alive.
If someone really wanted to shoot you, why would they not figure out a ways to kill you otherwise?
The myth that without guns there are not deaths is especially absurd. It just means you are less likely to be able to defend yourself, especially if you are weaker physically than your attacker.
That has been the great boon of firearms - it equalizes your ability of defense in cases where others that seek you harm either outnumber you p
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The second amendment does not permit you to carry gun to defend yourself from violent crime.
DC v. Heller [cornell.edu] explicitly states that carrying a firearm for self-defense is a purpose of the 2nd Amendment; the Supreme Court held that 1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53.
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I'm anti-guns but this must be some of the crappiest arguments I've heard. People get stabbed, bludgeoned, hacked and strangled to death without guns too. Your average "family tragedy" doesn't take anything more than kitchen knifes or a tool rack. Short of a very few protected individuals very few could survive an outright assassination attempt, even the celebrities with bodyguards aren't equipped like the Secret Service. And even they have problems if someone comes in guns blazing. The main arguments I hav
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While I agree completely in your assessment of the 2A; What makes you so sure that if neither of us, in a hypothetical fight, would both be alive? If you attack me I play for keeps. I gouge eyes, I can crush your trake with my index finger and middle finger, I shatter elbows, and if tour down I will stomp your cervical vertibrae with combat boots. The fight isnt over until I am certain the threat is neutralized. Which means your not getting up. A gurney or body bag, either will suffice. This is how Ive bee
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Yes, but who is going to defend me from you?
I have my own gun, and I use it to defend myself from you. I shoot you, you shoot me. In the end, I'm still dead. Now, if neither of us had a gun in the first place, we would both still be alive.
No. You would be dead by a knife on your belly, as the assassin would be pretty sure you are defenseless, and he would walk away from it easily.
Guns are no a life insurance. Guns are deterrences. And on your example, you take the bastard with you - one less criminal walkin
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The first two sentences were from the parent post. Somehow, the quoting failed on me here.
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define "free state".
Also, Weapons protect life all the time.
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Much better than having to pay taxes, which libertarian tossers like you keep telling us is also a form of violence.
Nice to see libertarians showing their true colours once again - you only care that you get to exercise a freedom to intimidate other people. Politeness backed by threat of death. So FREE!
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So that large criminals can freely intimidate the smaller members of society. got it.
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No one cares about a loaded magazine as there is no firearm.
So, literally, no one?
Security lines were closed and flights were temporarily grounded at a San Francisco International Airport terminal...for nearly an hour ...
Sigh. (Score:2)
"Rotiski said the lines reopened after officers located the passenger and brought him back for re-screening."
By which time he could have passed off anything else he was carrying to anyone else in the departure lounges who were already "past security" and they could have easily taken it onto a plane.
Well done guys.
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This.
If you want to get a weapon by security, you smuggle it in a piece at a time. Over many weeks. And hide the pieces somewhere inside the secured area. If one courier gets stopped, you just repeat the process until a complete set of parts gets in. Assemble and walk onto an airplane.
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There are much easier, lower risk strategies that security can't address that there is no point in this type of complexity. Anything can be brought onboard for a price.
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In 'murica, you just buy a new gun at the other end.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Big surprise (Score:5, Funny)
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I am surprised that they actually figured out who it was *before* he got on a plane.
You emphasize *before* as if people don't need to stand around for 40 minutes before getting on a plane, and as if they weren't in control of the time they had to find him: "flights were temporarily grounded"
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Well, FWIW, SFO does private screening, so it isn't actually TSA.
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Well, FWIW, SFO does private screening, so it isn't actually TSA.
Really? It said TSA on the badges the last time I went through.
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No, check the letters carefully. While the logo looks like TSA’s it is CAS.
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OK. I will in May when I next go through SFO.
I'll be glad (Score:1)
I'll sure be glad when they finally catch all the terrorists & we can go back to normal.
Any day now.
Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
Reality: He would have gotten on the plane had a crappy meal, a fraction of a can of Coke(tm) and arrived at his destination. A disaster was not averted. 100's of lives were not saved. A government rule was enforced. Nothing more.
TSA headline: Our agent heroes saved you AGAIN! Countless lives saved and counting. btw. We demanddeserve another 10 billion in funding.
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A disaster was not averted
A bit amplified. What would the guy do with a "loaded magazine"? Throw the bullets at the crew?
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The real problem is all those people in the world that create hyperbole by making up news headlines that don't exist and make claims that weren't presented anywhere in the source materials.
Now how the fuck you were voted +5 Insightful instead of -1 Offtopic is beyond me.
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STOP signs saved your life? Another 2 billion spent on traffic rule signage? All waste of money.
Right buddy?
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A magazine is not a gun (Score:2)
It's not even dangerous ffs. You could do more damage bludgeoning someone with an iphone.
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*Exacty* A loaded magazine is relatively harmless (no more dangerous than a notebook PC). A gun without a loaded magazine is relatively harmless (no more dangerous than a hardwood bat). Ammunition without a magazine or gun is harmless (well, I guess one could get hit in the eye with a hurled round, but that's about it). Only when all three are put together do you have something that's dangerous.
So no point to prevent one from making it through. Not like a group of three people could separately try to board, one with an unloaded gun, one with an unloaded magazine and one with bullets.
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At least they noticed this time (Score:1)
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The only guns (and other weapons) that have ever been detected and confiscated by TSA were the ones people accidentally left in their bags, like yours. But as you report, they don't even get all of those!
They run tests to try smuggling guns and knives onto the planes through these checkpoints. The rate of success -- that is FAILURE of security is well above 95^ every time.
Security Theatre.
j
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I could have the wooden handle from a trench knife hidden in my sock.
Re:Firearm or air pistol (Score:4, Funny)
It would easily fit in your underwear.