Yo,
on Fri, 18 Jan 2002 17:46:33 -0400, Wayne Culberson wrote:
I've carried on a pocket leatherman in the past, has scissors, small
blade, etc. I just threw it in the basket with the coins, and have had
no questions asked. I suspect those days are gone.
Yeah - doesn't it make you feel much safer that now, in case there
happen to be some lunatic religious or other fanatics on a suicide
mission on your flight, you won't even have a pocket knife to oppose
them? :-(
Seriously - I've sometimes wondered whether all these security
measures make sense. Wouldn't it be better, instead of trying to make
absolutely sure that no weapons, no paper cutters, no nail files,
etc., get on board (which, IMHO, is impossible, as recent events have
shown), to _require_ a certain percentage of the passengers (not
anyone, of course, but people like active or reserve military, police,
or others who carry weapons on their jobs or are otherwise licensed to
carry, some of which are on most flights anyway) to be armed? That
would most likely have prevented the hijackings and the horrible
terror of Sept. 9.
In that context, it would be no more than an insignificant detail that
this would also be better for our films.
MtFbwy,
Volkhart
Yeah, this had occurred to me too. The current practice is just to
intensify the making of people to be helpless while the criminal gets
the upper hand.
It would be easy to do. I could imagine a "packing" volunteer force
of frequent flyers that could have been screened, given some
training, and given special ID from the feds. A dozen anonymous
armed "citizen guardians" on each flight would be a great
discouragement to would be hijackers. But, it would require a big
change in attitudes about trusting ordinary people.
Winsor
--
Winsor Crosby
Long Beach, California
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