Molon Labe !
Posted on 11/11/2002 11:50:31 AM PST by InvisibleChurch
Items Banned by 1994 Airline Rules Items Banned by 1994 Airline Rules
The Associated Press
Nov. 11 — Items listed in a 1994 airline industry manual that passengers were forbidden to carry beyond airport checkpoints:
Ammunition
Axes
Box cutters
Brass knuckles
Carbon dioxide cartridges
Dynamite
Fireworks
Gasoline
Gun powder
Hammers
Hand grenades
Hunting knives
Mace
Meat cleavers
Oxygen tanks
Paint
Pepper spray
Pistols
Plastic explosives
Radioactive materials
Revolvers
Rifles
Starter pistols
Swords
Tear gas
Toy transformer robots (forms toy gun)
Toy weapons
Among items allowed past checkpoints:
Baseball bats
Darts
Hockey sticks
Knitting needles
Letter openers
Pocket utility knives (less than four-inch blade)
Scissors
Ski poles
Source: Checkpoint Operations Guide from Air Transport Association and Regional Airline Association.
Profile, profile, profile.
No, I am not exaggerating. Young Arab men have been hijacking planes since when I wore bell bottoms jeans. There were rules in places forbidding airlines to board groups of young Arab men. Every single hijack team on 9/11 made it on board in spite of those rules.
Did anyone get fired? At the airlines? At the FAA? Did the airlines get fined? Did the CEOs of UAL and AMR apologise for not following their security rules? Nope, you and I gave them $15 billion. Did the airlines start treating passengers better, to make them more comfortable and feel safer? Yeah, right. Having morons grope grandma while I wait an extra half hour sure enhances my feeling of safety and overall customer experience.
I was wondering why I always saw so many live hand grenades in the disposal containers at check-in.
Is there some form to fill out, so I can get them back?
Molon Labe !
Yes, they actually had time to organize--something that would not be available with firearms in the picture, as the bad guys would have the advantage of being able to shoot anyone who wasn't one of them the instant he or she got out of his seat to talk to someone else. When weapons outrange arm's reach or the immediate extension thereof, organization BEFORE the battle becomes crucial.
If they'd had guns they'd still be alive!
That is beyond the level of "possibly hypothetical in a speculative sense." You don't know that; the historical experience of combat in the gunpowder era does not support your case.
Nope. I don't think anybody should pack heat in the passenger cabin, including the sky marshals.
I'm just a realist about how things work in battle. It's a far better thing to have 200 good guys vs. 6 bad guys in a hand-to-hand brawl than 200 good guys who don't know each other, have not trained together, et cetera, vs. 6 bad guys who HAVE trained together, all with firearms--because I'd have to put my money on the six bad guys.
No, it's called training and teamwork. It's not the sort of thing that is picked up 30 minutes before boarding in the airport lounge.
Frankly, I don't care (and seriously doubt) if arms do give an advantage to the pre-planned.
Frankly, I don't care what an armchair commando believes. The real world thinks very differently.
As an aside, there seems to be a strong correlation between cities and countries with mass transit and a sheeplike socialist mindset. Freedom carries many risks and is no guarantee against the aberrant raider or marauder. Without a yearning for free choice in the general population, history shows there is no practical defense against tyranny. Trading safe skies for a sheeplike attitude in the population is hardly a bargain, and is a pragmatic solution to only unofficial terror.
Local optima do not optimize a system. Deciding what is the system to optimize is half the problem. If your desire is external control, your paradigm may be more optimal than mine. If your desire is self control, a free spirited people, risk tolerant rather than risk aversive, then perhaps a more expansive system to be optimized is worthy of your consideration. Certainly that was the founder's vision, who desired that all men be armed so that they may respond equally effectively (or even ineffectively as in your analysis, but at least freely) to bushwhackers and tyrants alike.
Sure. Now all we need is a Delta Force-caliber combat shooter on every flight. We don't have Delta Force-caliber combat shooters growing on trees.
Oh, and you're forgetting that this was nearly 30 years ago. The terrorists as dumb as that crowd have all gone on to their eternal reward. The ones left are a hell of a lot smarter. Methinks that if it were replayed today, the Sayaret Maktal or D-Boy shooter would get scragged within ten seconds of starting his move.
So the individual defender who is determined and applies the tactical element of surprise can prevail.
You are forgetting one other critical element--LUCK. You cannot make policy based on an assumption that good luck will be with the good guys and bad luck will be with the bad guys.
Granted, the odds are with your evaluation, which is why that is the collective solution to the problem.
Exactly.
You have to make an overall policy for the great majority of cases, not the extremes that fall off either end of the Bell Curve. Given the tactical realities that shape the battlefield, it's better to have an unorganized hand-to-hand brawl than an unorganized-vs.-organized shootout.
The collective solution, however pragmatic in a narrow sense, still infringes on individual rights and breeds a submissive mindset.
I can think of a dozen or so folks whom I wouldn't object to having on my property, armed with their weapon of choice. I can think of another dozen folks that I would not trust with anything more dangerous than a rubber ball--and I'd keep an eye on them if they had one :o)
As an aside, there seems to be a strong correlation between cities and countries with mass transit and a sheeplike socialist mindset.
That's a rather far jaunt aside.
Freedom carries many risks and is no guarantee against the aberrant raider or marauder.
However, in circumstances where you are going to be stuck with the marauder, it's far better to do your best to ensure that the marauder doesn't get any advantages.
Without a yearning for free choice in the general population, history shows there is no practical defense against tyranny.
Fine. Your choice is free: don't travel by air.
Trading safe skies for a sheeplike attitude in the population is hardly a bargain, and is a pragmatic solution to only unofficial terror.
Better a pragmatic solution to a specific situation than a Procrustean Bed solution that deliberately favors the bad guys in this case.
Local optima do not optimize a system. Deciding what is the system to optimize is half the problem. If your desire is external control, your paradigm may be more optimal than mine. If your desire is self control, a free spirited people, risk tolerant rather than risk aversive, then perhaps a more expansive system to be optimized is worthy of your consideration.
Quit acting like you're some sort of intellectual. That section is about as intelligible as post-modernist deconstructionism, and just about as relevant to the real world.
Certainly that was the founder's vision, who desired that all men be armed so that they may respond equally effectively (or even ineffectively as in your analysis, but at least freely) to bushwhackers and tyrants alike.
OK, I see. Your objective is less about effectively handling these situations, and more about your psychological need to carry your firearm with you at all times. You've just marked yourself, IMNHO, as someone I wouldn't trust with a butter knife on my property, let alone a firearm.
Seriously, whose airline do you think the masses would chose to fly on if proscriptions on personal arms were lifted? How about it Freepers, given a choice between external control and self control, whose airline would you patronize? If you could vote with your feet and your pocketbooks, would you vote for deterministic central control, or adaptive distributed control?
After the first successful hijacking/kamikaze mission by a small team of disciplined shooters--in other words, in less than six months--not yours.
Wrong. First of all, killing everyone on the plane is a remarkably effective technique of ensuring that you are in uncontested control of the aircraft. Second, once again, you're dealing with a group of people who have trained together for weeks or months, versus a group of people who haven't seen each other before they got to the boarding lounge. The general rule is that in a firefight between these two groups, the few and organized will prevail over the many and unorganized. It's why smart armies spend months forming what are known among the warfighting cognoscenti as "primary groups," small groups of men who have lived and trained together. It's because each small group of men will fight and die together. A pickup scratch team will most likely not fight at all; it will not fight nearly as effectively as its numbers would indicate; and will collapse much more rapidly.
You seem to be assuming that present security measures will continue to keep unarmed hostiles off passenger planes.
First, why do you think they used boxcutters?
Second, tighten security measures as needed to prevent the introduction of firearms into the passenger cabin.
With a little thought the bad guys can still get arms onto planes.
Indeed. And when they pre-smuggled weapons onto at least one plane that landed prior to being hijacked, they smuggled...knives and boxcutters, not guns. Fancy that. Probably because someone else finding guns would immediately know that someone was intent on hijacking the aircraft.
Also, the geography inside a plane doesn't really give the unarmed defenders as great an advantage over poorly armed hostiles as you presume.
Geography is largely irrelevant in this scenario.
All activity is funneled down the aisle. If you presume well trained hostiles, they still have the advantage, as only a few defenders can engage at a time.
Tell ya what: go to a really narrow hole-in-the-wall bar. Have 30 people line up single file in front of you. Now tell me how you're going to kick all of their asses with a boxcutter, one at a time.
I guess we could summarize our two positions as trusting deterrence versus trusting prevention. I'm not saying prevention can't work, just that I find the unseen social costs to be higher than you find them.
If they're unseen, they are not costs. If you do not like it, then f***ing well walk.
For if you presume disarmed victim zones work on airplanes, then why not apply the technique everywhere?
Ah, I see. You merely presume that everyone but you is an idiot.
As to unseen costs, you might enjoy reading Fred Bastiat's "That which is seen and not seen", a classic economics treatise with some very thoughtful analysis. You can find it on the web for free as downloadable e-text for a PDA or read it directly off a web page.
We can argue scenario pathologies endlessly, pretending good, pretending bad, whatever our tendencies. Since you believe the outcomes are deterministic, there's no point, we are at an impass. As you have stated, any failure in security is simply an incentive to "tighten security measures as needed". My point is that there are always unintended consequences of turning up the gain in this manner. The need to do so is usually a sign that the law of unintended consequences is already in play.
You assume that most people can't tell the difference between the general rule and the specific situation. If that isn't presuming everyone but you to be an idiot, then it's a passin' imitation.
My point is that there are always unintended consequences of turning up the gain in this manner.
There's unintended consequences to doing anything, including doing nothing. If you can't deal with unintended consequences, or you are just too damn lazy to do so, then kindly leave us grown-ups alone.
Poohbah's sentiments show that the legacy of the gun-restricting victim disarmers lives on, this time in the name of "The Historical Experience of Combat in the Gunpowder Era." This is not at all about what you perceive to be the "best" scenario, procedure, policy, or what you believe to be "reality" or any other pretext. This is about the inalienable right to self defense, that being a fundamental human right. That right does not change at 34,0000 feet, unless of course you think the meaning of "shall not be infringed" is dependent upon elevation.
You seemingly have no qualms about aiding in the slaughter of innocent people, as a consequence of the rules you’d like to impose. “You don’t know that they wouldn’t have died had they had guns! You don't know that! You don't know that!” You are fit to judge how many dead is few enough? Your intuition about "how things work in battle" does not give you that right. Who are you to decide that they shouldn’t have had the chance to fight back using something other than toothpicks and steaming towels from first class, lest more of them die?
This "I know better and therefore can step on individual rights" mindset is no different from the Soviet central planners who "knew" what careers people should go into, no different than my communist aunt who "knows" that people with guns are of no use because "you can't respond that quickly to a crazed maniac who just starts shooting", no different than my collectivist friend who "knows" how little "too little" is for a business to pay its employees, no different than the government youth propoganda directors (i.e. public school teachers) who "know" how to educate your children better than you do, and no different than the infant-incinerating ATF jackboots and DEA agents who care not about the innocents murdered or otherwise imprisoned because "the national drug policy" is what is at stake.
Our constitutional republic was created to be free central planners who pass off their insatiable desire to control others as "policy", screwing individuals out of their most basic God-given rights for the ostensible purpose of benefiting "the world", "the children", "the nation", "the flag","the people", "the whales" or some other collective that can be used in a dialectic political conflict.
Even in countries ruled by tyrants demonstrating this mindset, a critical mass of individuals always figures out that it is endowed by the Creator with certain INALIENABLE rights that do not depend on the elitist world view of some "realist" central planner, such as the right to keep the fruits of one's labor, and the right to defend one's property (i.e. oneself) with lethal force if needs be, the specific details of the simulated conflict at 34,000 feet notwithstanding.
If you really stand for freedom, you will cease to marginilize the rights of sovereign individuals to the benefit of some collective of your invention.
I was going to generate a polite response to the first post, until I got to the last paragraph.
As for your post: I generally favor unrestricted possession and carriage of firearms, including no-permit concealed carry and unrestricted ownership of automatic weapons. In one case, unrestricted possession and carriage gives extreme benefit to the bad guys without any corresponding benefit to the good guys, and the interior of an aircraft at 34000MSL is that singular case. I'm sorry you feel the urge to express your disagreement with my views in the form of a temper tantrum.
Now, don't tell me you're surprised when your style shakes loose a flame every now and then ;-). Generally I'm in favor of well-regulated forums allowing ready access to the abuse button, but the one exception is where the passionate discussion of fundamental ideas occurs. So I guess that no longer includes FR. I have been deprived of seeing what torqued you in the pulled posts. Was it insults or ideas? I expect a Poohbah to have a pretty thick skin, and certainly our exchange infringed on the civil and courteous without any over-reactions on either side. A good bout should always be seasoned with a little salty taste left in the mouth.
The option for response is still there. It's just that said response will be on a playing field where raw numbers tell far more than tactical cohesion. You're mistaking not having firearms for not fighting back.
I have been deprived of seeing what torqued you in the pulled posts. Was it insults or ideas?
Neither. It was two death threats against me for holding a politically incorrect position.
I expect a Poohbah to have a pretty thick skin, and certainly our exchange infringed on the civil and courteous without any over-reactions on either side.
Generally, I have a pretty thick skin. But this was, to quote the Irish poet Sean O'Casey, "...just going beyond the beyonds."
Death threats????
The last paragraph for the most part was not intended to be inflammatory, else I would have taken it out in post #2 - the idea is that tyrants in history who sought to restrict this fundamental human right ironically have found themselves being taken out by the tool they sought to restrict. "Hopefully you'll get what's coming to you" means that if you continue on with this mindset, you too may be shown the limits of your authority in a truly non-gentlemenly fashion - and there won't be any moderators to turn to. In any case, this seems like a death threat? Isn't that a bit of a stretch? Sorry if this came off as a death threat.
Furthermore, you've given out some spicy commentary yourself.
If you do not like it, then f***ing well walk.
If you can't take it, then don't dish it out.
Now regarding your comments:
I see two possibilities with your seemingly pro-firearms view.
(1)You don't really believe in the idea on inalienable rights, one of them being the right to self-defense. You've simply deemed it "permissible" for individuals to own firearms because you're focusing on the advantage that such a view happens to bring about (i.e. lower crime rates). An elitist attitute as a "policymaker" interested in creating a policy with a clear benefit is the impetus. That is to say, you've adhered to the correct policy for the wrong reasons. When you decide that the scenario would be different in an airplane for any number of reasons, this policy is suddenly revoked and your elitism again manifests itself.
This view is analogous to governments of countries that adopt "capitalism" - not capitalism referring to a true market economy, but rather Keynesian economic principles, a theory that says that an economy can have "regulated freedom". The central planners and central bankers give their subjects a palpable freedom compared to "communism", but this is merely done to generate greater productivity in the "private sector" so the sheeple have more wool to shear at clipping time, if you will. It's an illusion created for greater control, in the end.
(2)The other possibility is that you actually do believe in basic individual rights, but suffer from an affliction commonly known as CBS, or Compartmentalized Brain Syndrome. In CBS, a person's brain has the same regions and hardware as any other person's brain. The problem, however, occurs when information is transferred from one compartment to another. For example, guns on the ground good, guns in planes bad. Though consistency in principle would dictate that this relationship is patently absurd, the afflicted are generally not able to make the connection by moving related ideas from one brain compartment to another. It's a horrible condition.
A diagnosis can often be made by the victim's use of telling terms. Commonly heard is the 1-2-3 all together now - "That's different" - excuse.
I'd like to think that you're not the elitist your comments might suggest that you are.......
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