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Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

Armed screeners? That's ridiculous. I don't hear too many stories of shoot outs at the airport. The last thing we need is to turn TSA screeners into a police force. Customs agents are often armed, but they are trained law enforcement as opposed to the misfits making $10 per how searching for smuggled barbecue sauce in a carry on.

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> I don't hear too many stories of shoot outs at the airport.

Perhaps because they're security conscious zones and often have heavily armed officers present?

Or perhaps it's because shoot outs are extremely rare pretty much everywhere. Most of the places where shoot outs don't happen have little in the way of heavily armed officers or security consciousness.

What about machetes and Molotov cocktails?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/03/21/new-orl...

I don't think the TSA agents should be armed, but I'm sure everyone (even the TSA agents) were happy deputy Slyve was.

At every airport screening point I've been to there's always been at least 1 deputy there on post. I feel that is sufficient. The tsa screeners are not the kind of people I would trust with a firearm.

You can't really screen against crazy one-offs. This could happen again tomorrow and the rest of the days of the year without anybody being able to come up with a plan to effectively screen out people like that before they can do harm.

The only way you can do that is by completely uprooting society. Any idiot can take a machete to the airport or a schoolyard or any other place where there are a lot of people and act out their ill fantasies.

An airport is actually a really stupid choice exactly because there are a ton of armed officers floating around.

Suicide-by-police officer is a pretty good description of acts like these.

Except for the bystander and TSA agent that were shot by the officer.

I actually find it irresponsible to fire a weapon in a crowded security line. Two innocent people were shot.

Shootouts seem rare, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Los_Angeles_International...

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