Federal air marshals have had over 200 mishaps

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dennishoddy

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Coming from CNN, an anti-gun source, they have brought out a small percentage of mishaps, with only a couple actually being in the aircraft.
What really makes me question this report and its bias is the comment at the end.

"John Mueller, a political science professor at Ohio State University who has assessed the efficiencies of various forms of aviation security, argues that the costs of air marshals outweigh their benefits. He recommends training and arming more pilots to resist hijackers and adding secondary cockpit barriers.
Referring to air marshals, Mueller said, "They deliver about 5 cents or maybe 10 cents of benefit for every dollar that's spent on them. There are much less expensive security measures, which could replace them and save lots of money."
I agree with training and arming pilots with the secondary measures to protect the crew, but who is going to protect the passengers in his scenario? It appears he is willing to sacrifice the passengers to preserve the safety of the crew. Air marshals fly with the passengers.
 

D. Hargrove

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All in all given the sheer number of Flights, number of Air Marshals and number of things that could go wrong at any given time..... IMHO, these folks are doing a fine job. Hard to judge their value on the dollar as in the planning process of the bad guy, the Air Marshal is a constant that certainly adds to the risk assessment of doing anything stupid.
 

Tanis143

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Coming from CNN, an anti-gun source, they have brought out a small percentage of mishaps, with only a couple actually being in the aircraft.
What really makes me question this report and its bias is the comment at the end.

"John Mueller, a political science professor at Ohio State University who has assessed the efficiencies of various forms of aviation security, argues that the costs of air marshals outweigh their benefits. He recommends training and arming more pilots to resist hijackers and adding secondary cockpit barriers.
Referring to air marshals, Mueller said, "They deliver about 5 cents or maybe 10 cents of benefit for every dollar that's spent on them. There are much less expensive security measures, which could replace them and save lots of money."
I agree with training and arming pilots with the secondary measures to protect the crew, but who is going to protect the passengers in his scenario? It appears he is willing to sacrifice the passengers to preserve the safety of the crew. Air marshals fly with the passengers.

Lets be truthful here though, the air marshals were never there to protect the passengers, they were to prevent another commercial airliner from being used as a weapon again. Honestly, the TSA needs to be disbanded all together. We, the people, fund a 7 billion dollar agency that so far has been nothing but a huge hassle to us. They have made flying cumbersome, intrusive and have been plagued with many cases of authority abuse and downright theft. To top it off the latest testing showed them to be very ineffective at stopping people from bringing weapons aboard.
 

dennishoddy

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Lets be truthful here though, the air marshals were never there to protect the passengers, they were to prevent another commercial airliner from being used as a weapon again. Honestly, the TSA needs to be disbanded all together. We, the people, fund a 7 billion dollar agency that so far has been nothing but a huge hassle to us. They have made flying cumbersome, intrusive and have been plagued with many cases of authority abuse and downright theft. To top it off the latest testing showed them to be very ineffective at stopping people from bringing weapons aboard.
I don't deny what you've said, fake explosives have been smuggled through their blanket of security, but it offers some deterrent, albeit not much. We haven't had any airline takeovers since 911 by terrorists have we?
Edit: other than the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber, but they were on foreign flights if I remember right, not regulated by TSA?
 

Dave70968

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I don't deny what you've said, fake explosives have been smuggled through their blanket of security, but it offers some deterrent, albeit not much. We haven't had any airline takeovers since 911 by terrorists have we?
Edit: other than the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber, but they were on foreign flights if I remember right, not regulated by TSA?
Thanks to alert passengers. How many has TSA actually stopped?

"Deterrent effect" is unquantifiable. You can't prove somebody decided not to try something because of the TSA. It's like the old joke about elephants painting their toenails red so they can hide in a strawberry patch: ever seen an elephant in a strawberry patch? No--that proves it works!
 

dennishoddy

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Thanks to alert passengers. How many has TSA actually stopped?

"Deterrent effect" is unquantifiable. You can't prove somebody decided not to try something because of the TSA. It's like the old joke about elephants painting their toenails red so they can hide in a strawberry patch: ever seen an elephant in a strawberry patch? No--that proves it works!
Lol, what a strawman argument, and I'm not arguing, that's why I said there may be some deterrent albeit not much.
Have we had a domestic flight taken over by terrorists since TSA has taken over? I'm just asking. If not, there is that deterrent is it not?
 

Tanis143

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Given the fact that they are hiding the actual numbers of failed stops from the public, and the last public numbers from 2015 were a whopping 95%, I doubt they are much of a deterrent.
 

Tanis143

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Lol, what a strawman argument, and I'm not arguing, that's why I said there may be some deterrent albeit not much.
Have we had a domestic flight taken over by terrorists since TSA has taken over? I'm just asking. If not, there is that deterrent is it not?

Correlation does not equal causation. Besides there are other security measures that can put in place other than subjecting citizens to full body searches and even more invasive searches at the whim of a TSA worker.
 

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