201–210 of 969 posts
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Wouldnt that also equip many attackers with better skills?
You basically just need to make the odds of encountering a trained responder higher than a lone wolf. FWIW, this would be a much better approach to the “well regulated militia” part of the second amendment than what the US has today. Edit to fix bad quote of “well regulated militia.”
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> Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much more common. Maybe because your base assumption is wrong: there are not many of them.
There are plenty of radicalized people, but valuing your life so little that you'll risk it for the cause and having a cause that wants you to kill random civilians is not very common.
Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.
> The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie. I don't see the same parallels. After 9/11 the US was extraordinarily united and committed to vengeance. Thousands joined the military. After COVID we're more divided than ever and people are not even willing put a piece of cloth on their faces. Widespread denial and resistance to anything inconveniencing them. Whereas after 9/11 people were willing…
Should I go on?
Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.
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There's the body scanners, but I don't know if they can detect anything weird in shoes. That said, how many shoe bombs have they intercepted? That should be a pretty good indication about whether it's still necessary, and I like to think the policy change (or lack thereof) is data-driven.
I've never liked the argument "how many shoe bombs have been intercepted?" or "how many terrorists have been stopped?" when it comes to TSA-style security. The presence of the security isn't necessarily meant to find people in the act of carrying out terrorism , it's mean to deter it in the first place since you will be found out (well, in theory anyway...). It's impossible to quantify how many plots have been deterr…
According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-fin...
“In most cases, they succeeded in getting the banned items through. 17 out of 18 tries by the undercover federal agents saw explosive materials, fake weapons or drugs pass through TSA screening undetected,” KMSP reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the operation.
https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/6/tsa-failed-det...
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> The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact attack that paralyzed an entire metro region for nearly a month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much more common.
Perhaps people are less truly radicalized, and substantially more negotiable, than we've been lead to believe. It certainly benefits both the media and politicians to sell us a story that there are an extreme number of radicalized people out there. I've certainly never met any neo-Nazis. Not to say they don't exist, but if they are truly as common as I've been told, I think I'd have encountered some.
Now you might think the threshold for an "extreme number" is much higher than drawing this type of crowd, but there are enough people for whom that is a big deal, that it makes for compelling news that gets views. Way too many for me, that's for sure.
I try not to fly and this is one of the major reasons I find flying so annoying. I've been through airports where they just use bomb sniffing dogs, why can't that be the norm?
It's a supply issue from what I've read. Most bomb sniffing dogs are sourced from overseas and there's a high demand for them globally. There simply aren't enough dogs that are capable. Even from a litter, there's a chance none of them will qualify after training, much like legit service dogs. We also use a lot of dogs to sniff for drugs.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/05/supreme-c...
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Go to a local school board meeting on masks and be disabused of this notion fairly quickly. edit: Votes on this one have been a wild ride.
Are you suggesting that people who disagree on masking children are radicals comparable to jihadi terrorists?
Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.
It’s not cynical when looking at the incentives. Once a rule is in place for “safety” reasons the political cost to remove is really high (what if something bad happens?). Politicians won’t touch it. That’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically (on a date or when a hard condition is met)
So I support the expiration date idea. I just wish there was a way to implement it such that it actually had the desired effect.
Are we still concerned with shoes at airports?