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Comment by rahimnathwani | Hacker News Reader

"Last year, undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time."

So does that mean that thousands more weren't detected?

You can't extrapolate from the two facts of "2,653 firearms discovered by TSA" and "undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time" to an expectation that some ~63,500 total firearms were not detected because it is likely that many if not most of the firearm discoveries were not attempts to smuggle the firearm onto the flight. It is not especially uncommon for someone who routinely carries a weapon or other non-TSA-approved item in his or her purse or briefcase to forget to remove it when flying. I've done this twice with a Leatherman multi-tool (among its tools are a pocketknife blade that is obviously not TSA-approved) that I used to keep in my laptop bag. In areas where guns may be carried, this happens with guns. In these cases, the travelers had simply forgotten to remove the weapon or unapproved item and were not attempting to smuggle it onto the flight. When it's pretty clear that there was no intent to smuggle the item onto the flight, the traveler is generally asked to remove the item and there is typically no penalty. I was asked to return the Leatherman to my car or pay to have it Fedex'ed back to my house.

... so TSA is probably really good at preventing people from accidentally carrying weapon onto a plane.

When you do it by accident, you're not exactly trying hard to conceal it. So, yes, they probably are really good at preventing this. The 96% statistic suggests that they are not good at preventing concealed, hidden weapons from slipping through...

You're right, of course, and that's why I said 'thousands' rather than doing the math assuming the least charitable interpretation (giving your 63.5k).

If the guns the TSA detects are carried accidentally, it seems that using x-ray or metal detectors to find them is overkill. Just ask 'please remove your laptop, liquids, and guns' before putting your bag through the x-ray.

According to http://sos.noaa.gov/Datasets/dataset.php?id=44 there are 29000 commercial flights per day in the US.

If the 7 guns per day corresponds to 4% found, that would mean that there are 7.0/0.04 - 7 = 168 guns per day not found.

That's abound 1/2 percent of flights (one in 172) where a gun got aboard undetected.

There's a huge difference between someone trying to get a gun through security and some poor person who just accidentally forgot it was here. The latter would be way easier to detect than the former.

Of course it's the former that we really care about.

I don't care about terrorists, because that's fantastically rare.

I do care about the fucking idiots who carry a lethal weapon but forget that they're carrying a lethal weapon, because those are the people who are less likely to keep that weapon away from tiny children. (Roughly one shooting a week in 2015 by children under the age of 3 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...)

Aren't those numbers overwhelmingly related to someone leaving a gun in a drawer at home and a toddler finding it? What does this have to do with airport security? Do you think someone's going to accidentally bring a gun to an airplane and their toddler somehow manages to find it during the trip and shoot themselves?

That seems like an awfully contrived scenario.

I think their point is that if you forget about a gun when you are travelling on a plane then you are the sort of person who probably does not take a great deal of care of your weapons, i.e. knowing where it is at all times. It is these sort of guns that are found by children, not the ones stored in gun cabinets or in locked drawers.

Accidentally bringing a gun to an airport is symptomatic of a careless attitude to firearm ownership. It means that you're not absolutely certain of where your firearms are at any moment. Whilst this mindset may be socially and legally acceptable in many American states, it is a fundamental reason for the high rates of accidental shootings.

Here in the UK, a licensed firearm owner is strictly responsible for their firearms. Firearms may only be transported in a locked case, directly to and from their place of use. When kept at home, they must be stored in a police-approved safe. Accidentally bringing a firearm or ammunition to an airport would result in criminal charges and revocation of your license. Similar laws apply in most European countries.

I don't think its too contrived to imagine if someone forgets they have a loaded gun in their bag at the airport that they would also forget they have a loaded gun in their bag when they set it down in the hallway at home. Thus gun is not locked up and is in easy reach of children.

If you're the kind of idiot who forgets that you have a gun in your bag you're the kind of idiot that forgets to put it in out of the reach of children.

We want those people to be discovered, and reminded to keep their lethal weapon in a safe place and to remember at all times where their lethal weapon is.

Don't lash out at people you clearly don't understand. When storing a gun in a bag you don't leave it loaded and you certainly don't leave it loaded with the safety off. In many cases these even likely have a lock on them (I lock when transporting them).

>Don't lash out at people you clearly don't understand.

You're the one who doesn't understand.

The article says 83% of the guns found by TSA were loaded.

So perhaps we can concluded that the kind of person to absent-mindedly carry a gun in their carry on are the kind of people who also don't handle guns safely?

It's pretty stupid to carry an unloaded personal defense gun. You might as well just carry a brick at that point.

I know very little about gun safety (don't own them) so I claim ignorance in the topic.

I was addressing the GP who said "you don't understand people don't transport loaded guns in their bag" when the article specifically said "83% of guns found in carry on bags were loaded." Which means people are clearly doing it.

I don't know the specifics of the safety of such a practice but I took GPs word on the topic that said practice was unsafe (or inadvisable).

A properly manufactured and maintained gun of "modern design" (which includes, for example, the 1911 as in that was the year the US Army adopted it), if its control surfaces (safety, trigger) are secured by a proper holster or the like, is pretty much not going to fire as long as you keep it away from a fire or a MRI's very strong magnet.

Still, if your loaded gun is being discovered by the TSA in this fashion, you're violating Rule 2 of gun safety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper#Firearms_safety) and of course you might not know until it's too late that your gun has a manufacturing flaw, you screwed up maintaining it, and there are no doubt many old guns out there with marginal designs.

Okay, I see you are trying to have an argument there. But what's with all the rage?

But finding careless gun owners has nothing to do with aircraft security. And anyways, the point is moot because the TSA probably has no problem finding guns that aren't intentionally concealed.

That the TSA has a problem with intentional concealment is unrelated to careless gun owners, and anyways, means estimates about apples missed given how some oranges were missed aren't accurate, nor are they useful.

I'm curious if there's a bias here though.

Do the undercover TSA agents not already know where the weaknesses are in the detection process?

That's very possible -- but it really doesn't change much, does it? A gun on its own isn't dangerous, a gun in the hand of a bad actor is. If bad actors (who, being motivated, must be assumed to have access to the same knowledge of weaknesses as the TSA) are getting ~96% of their guns through, it doesn't really matter that only 30%(no idea, just put a number<<96%) of neutral actors' guns do.

Compare pen-testing: You want the best possible hackers, with as much information as possible, to take a swing at your system - not a bumbling amateur, even if the amateur accurately models 99% of your regular users.

Possibly - but if they know the weaknesses, then it means that they are being left unaddressed for whatever reason (malicious or otherwise)

Or just that highly-experienced senior agents who've worked in many different locations and have "seen it all" know what to look for, but most agents are junior and don't.

Maybe undercover TSA agents are better smugglers.

Going by the usual standards of TSA people I dont think that guy was Jason Bourn.

To give them some credit. They have been pretty consistent about flagging and searching the portable electrical toolkit I use for work.

Every time I check it as baggage, I get it back with a TSA certificate notifying that it was searched.

Of course, I'm probably on some list now as a result. So, I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

I think what it means, relative to the OP claim, is that the TSA stepped up its game and is now reporting the guns it itself is trying to smuggle past itself as the subject guns that are being detected at airports.

If you know how the government works, that is the only plausible explanation.

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