You know all that screening, profiling and backscatter nudie x-rays you have to go through to get from point A to point B via plane, all “for your safety”? It’s a sham. It’s security theatre. It’s not to make you safer, it’s to make you think you’re safer. Know how I know?

A loaded and undeclared .38-caliber handgun tumbled from a checked bag at Los Angeles International Airport Sunday, prompting police to detain the gun owner temporarily.

A luggage ramp crew discovered the weapon after it fell from an unzipped compartment in a duffel bag they were loading onto Alaska Airlines Flight 563, according to police and the airlines. […] The owner of the gun, whose name has not been released, was questioned at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Pacific station and was allowed to board a later flight to Portland. The gun was turned over to Los Angeles police, the sources said.
[…]
The traveler told authorities he had flown out of Portland with the same bag, with the gun inside, three days earlier. It was not clear whether he had notified the airline about the gun that time.

So the loaded gun made it through two security screens before it was discovered accidentally, when it fell out of the bag in question. And it was loaded at the time. Which means it could have easily gone off in the cargo hold or, say, when it fell out of the bag. Either these screeners are personally incompetent and incapable of operating the machinery, or the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment put into place to “secure” these airports are simply worthless makework projects. And yet you’ll have to grit your teeth and submit yourselves to these practices, because to object means to end up on a watch list and get hounded for the rest of your days.

Read more at the LA Times.

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