Shoot 'em up
Yes, an "innocent" man died yesterday when federal air marshalls terminated him. And predictably, the liberal press is all over the various responsible fedeal agencies and people are aghast: "the poor man was murdered."
Folks, pull your heads out of your asses and listen up. The air marshalls did the right thing. I am sorry but when someone runs from the law, refuses to give up even when cornered and then reaches into a carry-on that the airmarshalls have every reason to believe may contain an explosive device ... then they run the risk of getting shot, mental illness or not.
Witnesses say that the man's wife cried out that he was mentally ill and had not taken his meds -- and that he did not have a bomb. In the environment of today, even joking that a bomb is anywhere near an airport will earn you a trip to the slammer. Do not pass go, do not collect 200. Why should anyone listen to her? Wouldn't that be a good ploy to downplay a discovery? And if the dude is mentally ill, who is to say that he has not decided that that particular flight would be a good one to end his life on? One person's statement that another person is not a risk hardly qualifies as a surety on which the lives of hundreds could depend.
Either you have air marshalls on board who are charged with the type of action that transpired yesterday, or you don't. Either you choose to protect our domestic and international flights from potential attack, or you go back to the box cutter days. A bolted cockpit door would have relatively small chance to protect a plane from a small Semtex device. A fed says "drop it" and you better believe that agent. Our society cannot make allowances for the fact that someone may have "lost it" when the safety of the public at large is at stake. It is indeed too bad that mental illness should have, in the end, caused that fellow's demise. But that is not the responsibility of a federal agency to determine in advance. And if there had been a bomb and it was triggered killing potentially hundreds of innocent people and it transpired that someone had hestitated to act and ultimately such action could have prevented the slaughter ... those self same second guess artists (chiefly looking for another reason to deride our government) would be all over it as "another failure to protect us. Boosh should have known."
You don't like it -- drive or take the bus.
Folks, pull your heads out of your asses and listen up. The air marshalls did the right thing. I am sorry but when someone runs from the law, refuses to give up even when cornered and then reaches into a carry-on that the airmarshalls have every reason to believe may contain an explosive device ... then they run the risk of getting shot, mental illness or not.
Witnesses say that the man's wife cried out that he was mentally ill and had not taken his meds -- and that he did not have a bomb. In the environment of today, even joking that a bomb is anywhere near an airport will earn you a trip to the slammer. Do not pass go, do not collect 200. Why should anyone listen to her? Wouldn't that be a good ploy to downplay a discovery? And if the dude is mentally ill, who is to say that he has not decided that that particular flight would be a good one to end his life on? One person's statement that another person is not a risk hardly qualifies as a surety on which the lives of hundreds could depend.
Either you have air marshalls on board who are charged with the type of action that transpired yesterday, or you don't. Either you choose to protect our domestic and international flights from potential attack, or you go back to the box cutter days. A bolted cockpit door would have relatively small chance to protect a plane from a small Semtex device. A fed says "drop it" and you better believe that agent. Our society cannot make allowances for the fact that someone may have "lost it" when the safety of the public at large is at stake. It is indeed too bad that mental illness should have, in the end, caused that fellow's demise. But that is not the responsibility of a federal agency to determine in advance. And if there had been a bomb and it was triggered killing potentially hundreds of innocent people and it transpired that someone had hestitated to act and ultimately such action could have prevented the slaughter ... those self same second guess artists (chiefly looking for another reason to deride our government) would be all over it as "another failure to protect us. Boosh should have known."
You don't like it -- drive or take the bus.
posted by Zaphod at Thursday, December 08, 2005
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