Free For All - The Free Liberal Blog: The Mid-air OK Corral

August 2008

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I don't know about you, but in this post 9/11 environment, this issue of "airline security" is bringing all sorts of overreaction. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) seems to add one onerous rule after the next. Irritating!

But, then, there is also the other side, the overreaction to the overreaction. Witness this commentary.
In it, Anthony Gregory of the Independent Institute suggests that airline security be “depoliticized.” As one who generally wants to “depoliticize” just about everything, I’m sympathetic. But then you look at the details. Gregory, for instance, says:

“If the unique danger is supposedly that planes can be hijacked and used as missiles as they were on 9/11, why not allow airlines to protect themselves by arming their pilots or even allowing armed passengers? The airlines have every incentive to protect their customers, employees and investments, and can determine the best way to do so.”

No expert in this matter, but I was under the impression that firearms in planes are a witches brew. Isn’t it the case that discharging a gun in flight could lead to cabin decompression and a crash? The prospect of every flight becoming a mid-air OK Corral strikes me as utterly frightening. Gregory’s proposal seems a great way to destroy the airline industry. Can you imagine a passenger assessing the options?…let’s see, Southwest allows box cutters, American allows machine guns, only the flight attendants can pack heat on United… If you connect from an American flight to a United one, please leave your machine gun in the bin at the jetway doors. Or should each flight have a metal detector at the jetway? Does Gregory have ANY idea the capital investment that would require?

I’d be interested whether the airlines would want to take on the security role Gregory suggests. With so many of them financially tottering, could they do so and remain in business? I’m not at all sure. Maybe we shouldn’t HAVE an airline industry, but this commentary feels nihilistic to me.

Of course, some of the measures by TSA have been excessive. I really hate taking my shoes off, for instance. In the long run, I’d surely prefer private solutions to the challenge in the long run. I’m not sure Gregory’s approach, however, advances liberty in the here and now. Privatizing TSA in this environment feels tin-eared to me. If it’s on point, perhaps someone can help me understand how so…

-Robert Capozzi

Comments

I seem to remember reading something suggesting that the typical airliner can actually withstand a bullet fired from the inside... ah I found an article. http://www.davekopel.com/NRO/2001/Making-the-Air-Safe-for-Terror.htm I don't know the credentials of the writer, but even Mythbusters debunked the idea that a bullet can cause explosive decompression.

Of course, if the airlines each had different rules, some of them might need to make some kind of investment to enforce differing rules. The airlines would likely want to avoid this, thus most of them (the big ones anyway) would likely have to come to some kind of agreement as to what is going to be allowed. Leave the details of financing this to them... and in truth, if the financial model of the airlines is so shaky that they can't handle (gasp!) freedom, then maybe they deserve to go bankrupt. It's not like airplanes disappear from the face of the earth when a company goes bankrupt...

And security via armed pilots and/or armed flight attendents and/or armed passengers would certainly be a LOT cheaper than what the TSA is doing now... and why should a guy like me, who NEVER flies (I can't really afford it) be forced (via taxation) to subsidize security for the airline industry?

Free markets, man, free markets.

Posted by: Tarvok | September 18, 2006 09:01 PM