[BengalTiger]

http://gmancasefile.blogspot.com/2012/01/tsa-fail.html

Frankly, the professional experience I have had with TSA has frightened me. Once, when approaching screening for a flight on official FBI business, I showed my badge as I had done for decades in order to bypass screening. (You can be envious, but remember, I was one less person in line.) I was asked for my form which showed that I was armed. I was unarmed on this flight because my ultimate destination was a foreign country. I was told, "Then you have to be screened." This logic startled me, so I asked, "If I tell you I have a high-powered weapon, you will let me bypass screening, but if I tell you I'm unarmed, then I have to be screened?" The answer? "Yes. Exactly." Another time, I was bypassing screening (again on official FBI business) with my .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol, and a TSA officer noticed the clip of my pocket knife. "You can't bring a knife on board," he said. I looked at him incredulously and asked, "The semi-automatic pistol is okay, but you don't trust me with a knife?" His response was equal parts predictable and frightening, "But knives are not allowed on the planes."

[Nuke]

you know its probibly a bad idea to disarm the passengers, then they have noting on hand with which to fight the terrorists, that is when they do manage to come up with their next attack plan.

[Nemesis6]

We should not send this video to Al Qaeda - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olEoc_1ZkfA

[redsniper]

Hmmmm, and in the related videos we see Japan's take on the TSA.

[HAZARDLEADER]

Don't you feel safer knowing that America is protected by vigilant security professionals at all times who make sure that the dangerous individuals known as 4-year-old girls or disabled 7-year-olds are only allowed to board a plane after a thorough body search?

Over protection causes more **** than its worth...

[BengalTiger]

you know its probibly a bad idea to disarm the passengers, then they have noting on hand with which to fight the terrorists, that is when they do manage to come up with their next attack plan.

There would have been a large chance 9/11 would have gone into history for being the largest attempted hijack ever, with over a dozen terrorists shot dead by passengers if they were allowed to carry on planes.

That said- There's plenty of other stuff that could be used as improvised weapons, and even more stuff that could easily be modded to be weapons.

[Bobboau]

you guys do know that shooting guns on a plane that you are flying in is not very good for your health right?

[Dragon]

Indeed, without special training you're going to punch a hole in the hull and depressurize the entire plane, resulting in a crash. That's one regulation that makes perfect sense.

[Scotty]

Uh, actually, that one's been mythbusted.  Shooting a hole in the plane does not result in explosive decompression.

Hell, planes have survived incidents in the air that left most of the upper fuselage missing and still landed without further incident.

So.... no, that's not why guns aren't allowed.  Nor will special training allow you to magically not do damage to the plane.

[MP-Ryan]

Let's also not forget that airports and airplanes have a bizarre way of turning otherwise normal, sensible people into drooling and/or belligerent idiots.  A guy with a doctorate can step out of his car, pick up his luggage, look at an airport, and immediately forget everything he has learned since kindergarten.  It's strange.

I worked in an airport, and I still fly frequently for work, and if there's one thing that I'm absolutely sure of it's that I do NOT want the general flying public to have access to anything that is designed to function as a weapon.  Nevermind the drooling idiot factor - speaking as a person in law enforcement, the average member of the general public is useless in any type of high-stress conflict scenario.  Worse, wannabes are a hindrance to those who actually know what they're doing.

There is a really simple way to keeping the peace on aircraft - one or two highly-trained, professional, and unarmed (except for perhaps a Taser) plain-clothes security/police personnel on each and every commercial flight.  It'd be cheaper than bodyscanners in every airport, you could reduce screening to a person-based rather than luggage-based affair (Israel has got this **** right), and would be less hassle for everyone involved.

[Dragon]

Uh, actually, that one's been mythbusted.  Shooting a hole in the plane does not result in explosive decompression.

Hell, planes have survived incidents in the air that left most of the upper fuselage missing and still landed without further incident.

So.... no, that's not why guns aren't allowed.  Nor will special training allow you to magically not do damage to the plane.

I wasn't referring to "explosive decompression" (I know it was busted, and that it couldn't happen anyway). At high altitudes, sudden decompression could cause the crew to pass out from the lack of oxygen (though they do have masks to prevent that) and destabilize the plane. Of course, at lower altitudes, holes in the plane are less problematic, but airliners don't spend too much time flying low. Maybe I did a little overstatement by mentioning a crash, but the effects won't be good (nor cheap) and the plane won't be able to continue flight (it'd most likely land at the nearest airfield). And while special training wouldn't magically prevent you from damaging the plane, it'd reduce your chances of doing so to acceptable level.

[Scotty]

Decompression due to gunshots is incredibly slow.  Slow enough that if you don't manage to get a mask on before anything actually happens means there either A) weren't enough masks, which unless your flight is severely overbooked isn't going to happen or B) whoever isn't wearing them probably has a good lesson to learn.  The crew, in a decompression situation, is the first group of people on a flight to don masks.

Again, I direct you to the example of the plan that lost the entire forward upper fuselage at altitude and still made a safe landing.  If something like that didn't cause a crash (and it is, quite seriously, the worst possible thing that could happen to an in-flight passenger aircraft short of losing an engine or spontaneously exploding), you severely underestimate the integrity of the aircraft.

Even if you hit a window with your shot, you're not even going to blow out the window, much less cause a sudden decompression.  Thank you again Mythbusters.  There are very few places you can actually shoot a plane from the inside to make it crash.  The pilots, probably, if they didn't have the autopilot on like nearly all commercial flights do nowadays.  Maybe throwing your gun into the engine would damage it enough to force a crash, although you're not going to get a good shot at doing that.

Aircraft are made of much sterner stuff than the media would have you believe.

EDIT: In case you think I was making stuff up about planes losing large bits of their fuselage mid-flight and still landing safely.

[The E]

There are several reasons why guns on a plane are a bad idea, structural damage to the plane itself being the smallest one.

The very biggest one is that an idiot with a gun can cause quite a stir among the hundreds of canned monkeys with him in the plane. Not to mention what a troll with a gun could do.
Yes, the argument that armed passengers can defend themselves exists, but I call bull**** on it. Without the sort of training that allows you to keep a cool head under fire, someone who "defends" himself with a gun will do as much or more damage than the attacker.

[Dragon]

Again, I direct you to the example of the plan that lost the entire forward upper fuselage at altitude and still made a safe landing.  If something like that didn't cause a crash (and it is, quite seriously, the worst possible thing that could happen to an in-flight passenger aircraft short of losing an engine or spontaneously exploding), you severely underestimate the integrity of the aircraft.

As I said, I overstated a bit when I talked about a crash. It indeed does take a severe beating to cause an aircraft to crash. Also, a hit to hydraulics would most likely actually be worse than getting a part of the fuselage ripped off. Still, it'd disrupt the flight. A good pilot can land a plane that lost both engines and hydraulics, but he won't be landing at his destination.
I think that it's generally understood that guns shouldn't be given to idiots and trolls in first place, but even reasonable people have a tendency to panic and we can't count on every gun user being trained to fight in crowded conditions. Not to mention idiots get their hands on guns anyway (as Darwin Awards can attest).
In general, civilians carrying guns on a plane are a bad idea. Normal, trained and uniformed security personnel, on the other hand, would be a better one.

[StarSlayer]

Wait, wait, wait.  Did somebody seriously advocate letting regular slubs carry firearms on an airplane? Seriously? Seriously?

Its easy plinking something with a rifle a football field away, CQB is entirely different beast and is immensely frigging difficult.  I don't care how many hours you've logged playing Call of Dimwhits, close range shooting in reality requires a high degree of technical expertise.  At close range a person only needs to sidestep to clear your sites.  Some untrained jackoff with a pistol is going to shoot most of their fellow passengers before they actually put rounds into the intended target. 

Thats exactly what we need some moon calf with an NRA logo tattooed on his forehead and wet dreams of being John McClane shooting up half the passenger roster and still missing the terrorist.

[General Battuta]

Wait, wait, wait.  Did somebody seriously advocate letting regular slubs carry firearms on an airplane? Seriously? Seriously?

Its easy plinking something with a rifle a football field away, CQB is entirely different beast and is immensely frigging difficult.  I don't care how many hours you've logged playing Call of Dimwhits, close range shooting in reality requires a high degree of technical expertise.  At close range a person only needs to sidestep to clear your sites.  Some untrained jackoff with a pistol is going to shoot most of their fellow passengers before they actually put rounds into the intended target. 

Thats exactly what we need some moon calf with an NRA logo tattooed on his forehead and wet dreams of being John McClane shooting up half the passenger roster and still missing the terrorist.

I drill extensively on close quarters battle. I can reliably pronounce all nine syllables of 'yippee ki yay, mother ****er' during my draw, although recently I have considered a more mild epithet, because there will probably be children and faithful persons on the plane. Suggestions please?

Normally I train with cardboard cutouts over which I have pasted printouts of terrorist faces. Recently it has become difficult to find high resolution images so I have started cutting clippings from my local newspaper and soaking them in coffee to brown them up. Ammunition is very expensive especially in this troubled economy so I am probably going to start a kickstarter

[StarSlayer]

Wait, wait, wait.  Did somebody seriously advocate letting regular slubs carry firearms on an airplane? Seriously? Seriously?

Its easy plinking something with a rifle a football field away, CQB is entirely different beast and is immensely frigging difficult.  I don't care how many hours you've logged playing Call of Dimwhits, close range shooting in reality requires a high degree of technical expertise.  At close range a person only needs to sidestep to clear your sites.  Some untrained jackoff with a pistol is going to shoot most of their fellow passengers before they actually put rounds into the intended target. 

Thats exactly what we need some moon calf with an NRA logo tattooed on his forehead and wet dreams of being John McClane shooting up half the passenger roster and still missing the terrorist.

I drill extensively on close quarters battle. I can reliably pronounce all nine syllables of 'yippee ki yay, mother ****er' during my draw, although recently I have considered a more mild epithet, because there will probably be children and faithful persons on the plane. Suggestions please?

Maternal Philanderer?

[Dragon]

 

Wait, wait, wait.  Did somebody seriously advocate letting regular slubs carry firearms on an airplane? Seriously? Seriously?

TBH, nobody did. Everybody said it's a bad idea, but we debated about why. 
I know enough about CQC to know that an untrained person would most likely end up shooting up the plane, the passengers and getting killed by his target for all his trouble.
Arming the crew could be a good idea, but armed passengers could only cause trouble.

[General Battuta]

I drill extensively on close quarters battle. I can reliably pronounce all nine syllables of 'yippee ki yay, mother ****er' during my draw, although recently I have considered a more mild epithet, because there will probably be children and faithful persons on the plane. Suggestions please?

Maternal Philanderer?

Looks like I'm gonna have to switch to the twist method

[The E]

Arming the crew is a better idea, how, exactly?

Unless you are willing to train these people to handle these weapons safely and responsibly at all times*, it's not that much better.


*Note: I consider the very presence of easily reachable firearms inside a plane to be a very very bad idea.
Reason being that, in the sort of situation that would call for its use, noone can be relied upon to do the Right Thing, unless the personnel responsible is going through the sort of training regimen that Secret Service personnel go through day by day.