Oh goody. I get to fly out of PDX next weekend and experience the stupidity first hand. I'm interested to see how different the screening process will be in Italy.

I'm always amazed that people can be so careless around firearms - and ammunition - but more so at the response of the so-called "professionals".

Who shut the barn after the horse had gone.

That's the thing to take from this. When Jeff Guinn and others say, "100% screening", they do not know what they are talking about, and the evidence is plain: repeated gaffes of this type.

It's a pity the Southwest pilot couldn't broadcast throughout the cabin a request for the passenger missing the bullet to speak up because otherwise everyone was going to be delayed with the additional inspection.

But while I almost never defend TSA, assuming the bullet should have been stopped by TSA prior to boarding, using either a) statistical QA theory, or b) Bayesian statistics, I think it's reasonable for the TSA, having found a bullet where it shouldn't have been and with no explanation, to reinspect passengers and plane.

"It was all TSA police."

The TSA are *not* the police.

@BunnyGirl: If you are flying *to* the USA, the idiocy is pretty much identical, because the airports are required to follow TSA rules. Usually the personnel is more competent and more polite, though.

For flights not going to the USA, Europeans have still adopted too many of the same idiotic rules (like "no liquids"), but they are applied with slightly more intelligence.

I am still for the idea of encouraging concealed carry on airplanes. There are now piles of statistics showing that increased concealed carry in the worst case has no effect on crime, and quite a few studies showing that is reduces violent crime.

Take school shootings, for example. Every case where some nutcase has used a school for target practice has taken place in a state where guns are not allowed in schools. In states where they are allowed (or even encouraged, as in Utah), there have been no such incidents.

Notice also the recent beheading in the UK: guns are strictly outlawed. Of course, the criminals were armed, so no one could stop them.

Crimes on aircraft are incredibly rare, so one probably won't notice any reduction. However, the point is that there is absolutely no reason to prohibit guns onboard.

same as they could in the drugstore, on the street corner, or in that person's living room.

Gee thanks, Amy: you've just explained why TSA should be in every drug store, street corner and living room in America.

Oh goody. I get to fly out of PDX next weekend and experience the stupidity first hand. I'm interested to see how different the screening process will be in Italy.

Posted by: BunnyGirl at June 2, 2013 10:37 PM

If you are on an American carrier it will be the same, a big hassle. If you are on a foreign carrier, they are not bound by the TSA rules.

Last time I flew out of Italy, the American carriers were in a separate terminal for security screening, then we were bused back the the international secure area and screened a second time.

"I'm always amazed that people can be so careless around firearms - and ammunition - but more so at the response of the so-called "professionals".

Ammunition is so non dangerous, I carried twenty pounds of it in my checked luggage on a flight last weekend.

22 rounds are particularly easy to lose, and spill, as they are very small, and the packaging is cheap and not very secure.

Carelessness with ammo is a totally different thing from carelessness with a gun which is perfectly safe, if it is not loaded, and you don't have your finger on the trigger.

This is another thing the liberal nannies have done, is made people irrationally afraid of an unloaded gun as if it was capable of self loading, aiming and firing all by itself. Kind of like running in fear every time you see a swimming pool, as if it was going to grab you, suck you in and drowned you.

I usually fly from Geneva through Zurich, Paris or London. It is rare that security is as hard core as in the US. Sometimes I dont even beed to take my shoes off. Sometimes they have extra us bound screening sometimes not. Last time I went throygh Zurich they did not have additional screening so I just transferred from my domestic flight directly

Dont know about Italy though

" ...I think it's reasonable for the TSA, having found a bullet where it shouldn't have been and with no explanation, to reinspect passengers and plane."

When, why, and for what?

AFTER the flight, no one is going to hijack it.

@raddy

"PORTLAND, Ore. - Passengers were pulled off a Southwest Airlines flight leaving Portland and re-screened by security after a flight attendant found a bullet on the plane Friday morning.

The Southwest Airlines flight bound for Chicago was about to depart from PDX around 6:30 a.m. when a flight attendant saw the .22 caliber bullet on the floor, according to airport spokesman Steve Johnson."

The reinspection seems to have occurred after boarding and before takeoff.

:sets tinfoil hat at a rakish angle:

this would be known as pretext and a number of comments have already shown it is working.

"we found [some object] and now we will need to re-screen everyone and everything in an overabundance of caution"

and this item was DEADLY in it's present state? would they have re-screened the flight if it was a box cutter?

Re-Screning a flight for the finding of a tiny bullet indicates that THE ORIGINAL SCREENING FAILED unless of course you couldn'a found such a small thing in the original screen.

AND w/o a weapon to put the shell in, the danger is astonishingly remote. Could you have it in a pen-gun, sure.
What kind of damage are you going to do with one tiny shot?
You are prolly at least as dangerous with a well wielded pencil, or even better a mechanical one.

And still, you're gonna get your a$$ handed to you by a buncha people that are no longer thinking you're going to hijack them to Cuba.

All that said, then, what reason would a fascist bureaucracy have for pulling you off a plane, lining you up, and searching your belongings?

Unless it was to habituate you to the process, and cow you, so that when they shout "Papers!" everyone will be in a hurry to show them papers?

Each little step in isolation, seems logical... but add up to a place you don't want to go

Our maintenance man found one .22 bullet at my work the other day. He brought it to me and asked what he should do. We agreed to keep it very quiet and tell no one, especially our paranoid boss who would have called the cops and asked that everyone coming into work that day be strip-searched. I took the bullet home to shoot in my pistol.

The reinspection seems to have occurred after boarding and before takeoff. -- jerry at June 3, 2013 7:56 AM

Let's look at the options of how it got onboard the aircraft then:

1. A current passenger carried it on. That means the TSA failed to find it during screening.
2. The bullet was onboard prior to the current flight. TSA screening failed at a different airport.
3. A cleaning crew member dropped it. The pre-screened service employees with all access badges brought a prohibited item into the secure areas of an airport.
4. A flight crew member dropped it. This would be the same people you are trusting to get you from point A to point B. If the terrorist is that far in what chance do you really have?

So how does re-screening help? What -- they missed round(s) the first time, but they'll find them the second time? It means they weren't paying attention the first time. So that means TSA security is a farce.

If another TSA team missed it, then that means the distant TSA missed the round(s). So that means the distant TSA security is a farce.

If it was brought through by "trusted" personnel that means the TSA pre-screening is a farce.

Another thing not mentioned was whether the bottom of the round was drilled out. I have seen more than one bullet that has been used as a pendant. It could have fallen off some chicks necklace. Which means TSA security is a farce.

Please point out any flaws in my logic.

For all you regular readers of the Goddess' blog you can skip past this post. I'm going to post my regular rant about not needing the TSA. For all you new readers, please read it carefully and refute any statement or misstatement.

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The TSA was not needed one hour and one minute after Tower II was hit!

The paradigm, the norm, the expected, what everyone was taught to do was to sit down, shut up and wait for the plane to land and the negotiations happen. That was the model from Entebbe onward.

The passengers on board did not really know what was about to happen on September 11, 2001 at 8:46:30 when Flight 11 struck Tower I.

Even the passengers on Flight 175 probably didn't realize what was about to happen when they struck Tower II at 9:03:02.

The Pentagon crash of Flight 77 at 9:37:46 may have been still a matter of ignorance.

At 10:03:11 on September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after the brave souls counter-attacked and caused the hijackers to crash the plane.

The time difference is 60 minutes and 9 seconds from Tower II being struck to the crash of Flight 93. The shoe bomber and panty bomber were taken down by fellow passengers as well. Recently, JetBlue's Flight 191 pilot was taken down by the passengers once he was out of the cockpit. Additionally how many times have you heard of passengers' concerns and diverted flights?

The TSA is and has always been a joke, no make that a total stupidity, that has wasted our country's fortune going down a rabbit hole.

If you don't believe me look at the 9/11 timeline.

There will never be another 9/11 style attack unless the attackers can arrange planes full of geriatrics, and even then it would be doubtful.

Oh, and someone brought bombs being an issue. If bombs were effective and simple then the Lockerbie bombing would have been repeated multiple times between 21 December 1988 and 11 September 2001. That's 4647 days or 13 years. Where was the TSA in that time? There was one successful bombing that was done in Colombia and two unsuccessful attempts in that time. The bombing in Colombia was a drug dealer assassination and not a terrorist attack.
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If I'm getting this wrong, please let me know.

I love your rant, Jim!

I think George Carlin did truthful justice to the issue as well:

http://youtu.be/uQdC-e82gmk

Jerry,

No response at all?