Come on, Jeff!

Explain how this represents 100% screening again - how it saves the entire nation!

Engineering advice for the TSA
12/04/12 - TSA Newsblog by Sommer Gentry [edited]

=== ===
Explosive Trace Detection (ETD) technology detects materials used in explosives. Identical chemical compounds are detected in medications, lotions, fertilizers, and other innocuous sources.

The public is not permitted to know what the TSA’s procedures are. But, as I understand them, a passenger is flagged for a secondary search in a private room when the ETD alarms.

There is an extremely low base rate of passengers trying to bring explosives through a checkpoint. Let’s use 21 in 10 billion. It should really be 2 in 10 billion, since the weapons used on 9/11 were box cutters rather than explosives.

Assume that explosives detection was nearly perfect, catching every true explosive and only alarming falsely one time in in every ten thousand. Bayes’ statistics tells us what happens. Only one out of five million positive test results would actually indicate an explosive device.

There is a psychological impact from processing millions of false alarms without a single real hit. This guarantees that screeners implementing the second, private room search will assume that every alarm is a false positive, undermining the effectiveness of any second search that could possibly be designed.

The same psychology defeats secondary bag searches. When a bag is alarmed at the checkpoint, passengers report that screeners search the bag looking for a prohibited item and stop looking when one is found, even when many prohibited items are present. This is how one passenger was allowed to fly with a clearly labeled five pound block of C4 military explosive in his carry-on bag.
=== ===

By the way, this is why single purpose armed guards at schools is a bad idea. The type of person you want to be a guard will not take the job of doing nothing all of the time. Make-work does not improve things, only distracting further from the original mind-numbing job. The schools might end up hiring pedophiles.

There is criticism that shool guards at the Columbine shooting did not actively engage the shooters, and so were relatively ineffective. They stayed back a good distance, distracting the shooters but not stopping them entirely.

There is criticism that school guards at the Columbine shooting did not actively engage the shooters, and so were relatively ineffective. They stayed back a good distance, distracting the shooters but not stopping them entirely.

Sounds like the most reasonable strategy to me. Rushing the shooter seems like a good way to get shot, and depending on your stealth isn't much of a plan, either. Being alone on the scene makes a cop or guard very vulnerable.

It also says something about the notion that all you need is a gun and a good intention to take down the bad guy. One cop at Columbine shot four times at 60 feet away, and he missed all four times.

And this, from a recent HuffPo article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/columbine-armed-guards_n_2347096.html :

LaPierre said having armed security on the scene is necessary so someone is there to shoot back. "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," he said. "Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away -- or a minute away?"

But in chaotic situations, it's often impossible to identify the "bad guy," as Smoker said in his account of Columbine: "There was an unknown inside a school. We didn't know who the 'bad guy' was but we soon realized the sophistication of their weapons. These were big bombs. Big guns. We didn’t have a clue who 'they' were."

One armed guard wouldn't work. We'd need an army. By the time it took one guard to get his ass from one end of the school to the other, it could be all over. And it seems unlikely anyone would approve the tax increases required to turn schools into police states, which is probably a blessing.

One armed guard wouldn't work. We'd need an army. By the time it took one guard to get his ass from one end of the school to the other, it could be all over. And it seems unlikely anyone would approve the tax increases required to turn schools into police states, which is probably a blessing. -- MonicaP at December 23, 2012 2:24 PM

Using Columbine as an example is a bad one. Because of Columbine most SWAT teams changed their tactics since then because of lessons learned.

When Columbine happened the standard was for the SWAT teams to clear every room, nook, and cranny even if they were still hearing gunshots. That was what happened at Columbine and upped the the fatalities and injuries. The new standard is to have the shooters go in quickly, barely clear anything and go to the sound of the shooting. Other teams come behind and take the time to clear rooms, help wounded, etc.

In Terror at Beslan: A Russian Tragedy with Lessons for America's Schools, the author suggests that it would be possible to get three man teams made up of retired or other ex-special forces with full up equipment for about $150K a year. A three man team knowing the terrain with enough ammo could hold off 35-40 terrorists easily for an hour or two. What do you think they against some punk with an AR-15.

But the simple and cheap answer is even better. Take the gun buster signs off the schools, let the teachers carry with appropriate training and let civilian concealed carry licensees also take the same training and set up a volunteer "community watch" in the schools.

It doesn't take much to scare the cowards off with just a mild hardening of the target.

Seconding Jim P:

Why is anyone yapping about COST, when the citizen is available by merely allowing her to have an effective weapon for self-defense?

It's STUPID to talk about money. Why the hell assume someone has to be PAID to defend others, other than the awesome folly that someone can be paid to defend yourself?

You might be assuming that only a trained, certified professional can do that. Where the HELL did you get that idea?