"Why are guns on plane not a problem?"

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Commentary
Why are guns on plane not a problem?
"At no time were passengers put at any risk," said TSA spokesman Christopher
White.
By Mike Thomas - Columnist
The Orlando (FL) Sentinel

 
The CTX-5500DS uses X-rays to search luggage.

An ion mobility spectrometer "sniffs" for explosives residue.

The Rapiscan Secure 1000 can practically strip search airline passengers.

Such gizmos sound great, but they don't work if you don't use them.

Last week two airport employees used their ID badges to bypass whatever
security gizmos are used at Orlando International Airport. They smuggled a
bag filled with 13 pistols and an assault rifle onto a Delta flight to
Puerto Rico.

Had they been terrorists, the plane would be on the bottom of the ocean.
There would be about 200 dead people, a national crisis, a canceled tourist
season and a crippled Central Florida economy.

Would you put your family on a plane to Disney World knowing that the local
airport was the one where a bomb got through? Imagine 24-hour-a-day cable
news coverage on lax security at Orlando.

The smugglers used a simple, obvious solution to bypass our most technically
advanced security systems. In other words, they behaved just like terrorists
behave.

The 9-11 terrorists used primitive box cutters to hijack airliners. Richard
Reid might have brought down an American Airlines flight with a shoe bomb if
not for damp matches. Terrorists from England planned to use a
peroxide-based solution and small electronic devices to bring down 10 planes
over the Atlantic.

These people bide their time, looking for openings. When they find one, we
react after the fact. We take off our shoes at the security gate. We check
our fluids at the gate.

Now we have a security breach big enough to walk through with a bag full of
weapons. Think how easy it would have been to sneak in a tiny piece of
plastic explosives.

This is by no means an isolated incident. It seems there is a long tradition
of smuggling guns and drugs on planes leaving Orlando.

Osama bin Laden's bunch know all about this loophole in our security. Last
year in Germany, a terrorist tried to bribe an airport employee into
planting a bomb in luggage.

Yet the Transportation Security Agency downplays any danger.

"At no time were passengers put at any risk," said TSA spokesman Christopher
White.

These guys got 14 guns on an airplane and there is no reason to believe the
same security lapse couldn't happen again tomorrow. Passengers very much are
at risk.

The TSA says it is dealing with the problem by randomly checking airport
employees. If random checks are all we need, why not use them on passengers
and get rid of these long lines at security counters?

More amazing is the response of U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, who
should understand that Orlando lives and dies by safe air travel. He
dismissed this incident as a couple of airline employees gone bad. What
happens when we get a couple of airline employees gone terrorist?

"The system is layered, and they were caught doing their bad deed," Mica
assures us.

The bag got on the plane. The plane went in the air. The bad guys were
caught after the crime. Catching terrorists after the fact is not a good
strategy.

What we have here is government with its gizmos, its game plan, its budget
and its plodding inertia. Having to go back and rethink strategy is not
something bureaucracies and politicians do well.

Instead, they will wait until we have a plane on the bottom of the ocean,
200 dead people, a national crisis, a canceled tourist season and a crippled
Central Florida economy.

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