by Becky Akers
USA – -(Ammoland.com)- “Number of seized guns triples at Charlotte airport,” a headline blares. Another article reports “more than 2,600 cases of people trying to bring their gun through security [in airports] across the US in 2015.”
Behind these stats are people: our families and friends, neighbors and fellow enthusiasts of shooting.
Most of them had either overlooked or forgotten the weapon they were carrying, as did “Charlotte[, North Carolina] lawyer John Fennebresque, the former UNC [University of North Carolina] Board of Governors chairman. … Fennebresque told the Observer he didn’t know the gun was in the briefcase.
‘It was an honest, stupid mistake,’ he said.”
But post-9/11 America no longer requires “criminals” to have motives. And so Mr. Fennebresque “was arrested.” Imagine what that did for his reputation and livelihood. “Police charged him with misdemeanor possession of a firearm on city property. He was released on $500 bail.”
Indeed, “criminals” don’t even need an actual firearm now. A woman with “a pair of gun-shaped stiletto heels” in her carry-on bag recently tried to board a flight in Baltimore. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) barred such a dangerous sole from flying and then mocked her on social media.
Day after day, the TSA preys on innocent passengers like our fashionista or Mr. Fennebresque. And no wonder: the agency claims to protect aviation from terrorists—but there are mighty few bad guys out there, regardless of how often and loudly our rulers insist otherwise.
Worse, the TSA has never once in fourteen years of pawing us and our belongings caught a skyjacker.
So how does the agency justify its $7 billion annual budget, its evisceration of the very clear, emphatic Fourth Amendment, and its sexual assault—sorry, “enhanced pat-downs” of passengers? Easy: it pretends absent-minded Americans threaten aviation and “saves” us from them.
Yet no evidence supports the widespread, unquestioned assumption that guns at 30,000 feet spell Armageddon. That’s right: not a single study, statistic, or even the most rudimentary research proves that disarming travelers protects them. Stripping us of every defense but our fingernails is based on politics and ideology, not facts.
Indeed, any study would undoubtedly show that armed passengers are safe ones, a la armed citizens on terra firma. What if passengers on those four doomed flights in September 2001 had packed heat? People still might have died, but probably not as many and certainly not as helplessly. If you or someone you loved had been on those planes, would you have preferred that passengers or only the alleged hijackers be carrying?
The TSA’s jihad against guns is merely another front in the feds’ war on the Second Amendment, another effort to render us impotent before our superiors in government. Indeed, given the TSA’s pedophilia before parents’ horrified eyes, its gate-rape of women while their husbands watch, it must disarm the public first. Never has any regime anywhere, at any time, no matter how brutal or totalitarian, groped its subjects wholesale; naturally, the government must guarantee we can’t fight back.
How can we combat this monstrous evil, this second and absurd security theater in the battle for our guns?
First, never for a moment swallow the TSA’s propaganda about its “mission.” Like the rest of the federal government, the TSA exists to destroy our liberty, not to protect us. There are far more effective methods for securing aviation than strip-searching seniors and persecuting patients recovering from cancer.
Second, denounce the TSA to your acquaintances. Anyone who’s flown usually despises the agency, which may account for polls comparing it to the IRS as “most feared.” Yet many Americans bizarrely believe we need the TSA to guard aviation. Remind such folks that the airlines, not taxpayers, should finance aviation’s security just as other industries finance theirs.
Third, we should defend rather than revile our fellow gun-owners who fall into the TSA’s clutches. Blaming these victims as “irresponsible” and prating that owners should always know their weapon’s whereabouts only empowers the TSA and other gun-grabbers.
Finally, boycott commercial aviation (bonus points for emailing your carrier the reason it’s lost your business). If enough passengers refuse to fly until the TSA disappears, the airlines will demand that Congress dissolve the agency. Eschewing commercial flights is also the best way to protect yourself and your family from the agency’s perils.
The TSA has killed one passenger and is morally culpable for the death of another; its incompetent buffoons have also damaged aircraft, risking a crash.
The TSA has long trained its sights on gun-owners. Time for us to reverse that.
About the Author:
Becky Akers is a free-lance writer and historian who publishes so voluminously that whole forests of gigabytes have died.
You’ve heard of some of the publications that carry her work (the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, Barron’s, the New York Post, American History Magazine, the Independent Review, Military History Magazine, the Ottawa Citizen, forbes.com); others can only wish you’d heard of them.
She’s also written two novels of the American Revolution, “Halestorm” and its sequel, “Abducting Arnold.”
They advocate sedition and liberty, among other joys, so the wise reader will buy them now, before they’re banned.
Ron, I must congratulate you on your unique perspective. Rarely in the dozen years that I have spewed my ill-informed and mistaken “facts” on the TSA in such venues as the Washington Post, the New York Post, Barron’s, Forbes, WND, alternet.com, etc., has any reader defended this collection of thieves and perverts; usually, the only folks demented enough to do so are its employees, the aforementioned thieves and perverts. We’ll assume you either are one of them or related to one. Your first paragraph raises a straw man. I am not arguing that the TSA should steal guns more “fairly”:… Read more »
Thank you Ms. Akers for engaging. It’s a rare quality to see such engagement when the author is so obviously incorrect in their assumptions. The list of venues you have written in is impressive, but would be even more impressive if you had better knowledge on the subject at hand. You ignored the fact that those who choose to carry a firearm must accept the responsibility such a decision really entails, choosing instead to blame the agency required by law to enforce federal regulation on the matter at the nations checkpoints. Where I ask you is your concern for the… Read more »
Ron, I’m touched. Your first paragraph tries to mimic my response to you, doesn’t it? You hoped to make me look as though I’m as big a buffoon as I showed you to be. But I cdn’t have done it w/o your help, my dear sir, whereas I haven’t given you an ounce of assistance. BTW, “the author” takes a singular pronoun, “her.” I know you feel heavily outnumbered here, but I am still only one woman, not a “their.” My “impressive list of venues”—all of them replete with editors who venerate the State as much as you do and… Read more »
I love it that you walk so blithely into the path. My saying that you are either incorrect in your assumptions or that you do not understand the subject are not “ad hominem attacks” madam, they are statements proven accurate by your own writings here. A case in point, you claim that because the TSA contacts law enforcement when they do their job and law enforcement does its job that somehow the TSA is hiring a “hitman” to do their dirty work for them? Lets examine that shall we? TSA is not a law enforcement agency, we can both agree… Read more »
The author here has most of her “facts” wrong. Yes, the TSA has caught many people over the years trying to bring a firearm into the passenger compartment of commercial aircraft, where they are prohibited by federal regulations. Since the TSA does not know the individuals personally they are unable to determine intent, and protestations by the individuals that they “forgot” they had them do indeed fall on deaf ears, because people lie. That is a simple fact the author does not even try to address. Firearms have been prohibited in commercial aircraft since the 1960’s, long before the TSA… Read more »
Our federal government is hostile to its citizens. If someone forgets and brings a loaded weapon into an airport unintentionally, they prosecute him regardless, as the anal-retentive have a law and they are going to use it! They confiscate his property and later destroy it. A government not hostile to its citizens would recognize, after performing due diligence, that the person who made the error had no intention of committing a dastardly deed and was just forgetful. They would then provide him an avenue to re-claim his weapon upon return, or give him the opening of sending it to an… Read more »
Bingo. The govt is, indeed, hostile to us, the taxpayers who lay its golden eggs.
Remember that the TSA exists to subjugate us, not to “protect transportation,” as it claims. Govt can only subjugate people once it has disarmed them. So we’re further ahead once we understand that the TSA’s purpose is to disarm us—there is no common sense, no justice, no “due diligence,” nothing that will interfere w/ this raison d’etre. Don’t expect rationality or empathy from these goons. They are out to snatch our guns and tyrannize us. Period.
Well written article,
And a well written response to Clark Kent.
You’re very kind, Loreno. Thank you. Clark Kent is not alone: a great many Americans insist that we’re “free” and that govt protects our liberty. And I understand. It’s traumatizing to realize that politicians and bureaucrats, to whom we fork over so much of our money, are Americans’ dire enemies; we want to think they have our good and the country’s good at heart. Ergo, we who despise govt and who damn it for stealing our liberty seem unpatriotic. But we must always remember that govt and liberty are diametric opposites, just as fire and water are; the more we… Read more »
Regarding the picture, where the hell is the hand held metal detector????
Not very professional.
I know they have them someplace. If they have them and don’t use them, someone should sue the hell out of them or bring a complaint of indecent A&B. No need to be touching like that.
The courts have consistently ruled that the “searching” passengers is necessary and even welcomed, given the threat of terrorism. The TSA has a blank check to molest us any way it pleases.
Amusingly, several of its thugs have tried to grope women in stairwells or restrooms of airports, or outside airports, and have been arrested for assault. You can understand their confusion: why is it OK to grab a woman at the checkpoint but not at her car?
Please tell me, specifically, how the federal government exists to destroy our liberty, not to protect us. Methinks you throw the baby out with the bathwater…..
The NSA spies on us 24/7—virtually every electronic action you take and every electronic communication lands in the NSA’s files. And it feeds that info to other agencies, such as the DEA, which then cages people for possessing a weed. The DEA, indeed, exists for no other purpose than to destroy our freedom to choose what we will ingest. The EPA dictates what gasoline you may purchase and what light bulbs will illuminate your home, how many gallons your toilet may flush and whether a stream running through your land allows the govt to steal that land. The courts in… Read more »
Sure! Please now tell me that the thousands serving in our armed forces are now secretly out to destroy the USA! And how the federal park rangers are telling all of the forest animals to subvert Social Security! And how all of the NASA programs are really all about sending spaceships back to earth in order to cause computer glitches! Lady, your tinfoil hat must take at least a dozen rolls of Reynolds Wrap. P.S. If you don’t like in the USA, then don’t let the screen door hit you in the azz on the way out……