In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
It?s the Terrorists, Stupid
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
It's the Terrorists, Stupid
William Lolli
CalNRA Contributing Editor
June 11, 2002
The Israeli's have it right. It's no secret why Israeli Airport Security is superior to any other airport security in the world. The technique used by Israel and the "secret" is as clear as it is full of common sense: They go after the terrorists, not the weapons.
Hey. Now that is a novel approach.
Does that mean that the Israeli's are engaging in racial profiling? To American liberals and anti-Semitic wackos, absolutely. But let's face it. The very charge of racial profiling as a war technique is ridiculous.
The concept of racial profiling in a time of war against an identifiable enemy is irrational. Also the very idea of fighting terrorists while we voluntarily have our hands tied behind our backs because we are afraid of hurting some insecure person's feelings is just plain stupid.
To begin with, racial profiling has little to do with terrorist identification. Racial profiling is a liberal-activist term used to identify a law enforcement procedure used to suggest a racist method of using race-based behavior and prejudicial appearance to determine criminal probable cause. Civil rights advocates have condemned the practice as being unconstitutional. Okay. Let's say that their allegations are true. Fine with me. Racial profiling, then, is a bad thing to have foisted upon poor minorities.
But in a war against terrorists there is no need to determine probable cause. And the Israeli's know that.
Anyone who has any serious intention or commitment to providing security to a free people and a free state know to turn your preemptive attentions to the aggressor. That is why Israel's security forces scrutinize the terrorist and not the knitting needles grandma has in her bag.
The US seems to be split between two groups of Americans: those who are aware there is a war on and are taking the war seriously, and those who are perpetually self-absorbed and/or asleep.
Within the war-aware camp, there are conservatives and liberals, as you would expect.
But within the liberal camp, there seems to be a minority of American liberals who are in complete denial of reality. The members of this radical, vocal, intellectually elite-subset think that the battle to save Western Civilization can be prosecuted through politically correct, government-imposed social-policies. This vocal group also has easy access and support from the mainstream media, which makes their viewpoints easily heard and hard to ignore.
Those government policies that are not politically correct are impugned as insensitive at best, and fascist at worst.
So according to this group, arming pilots is a public danger. Arming passengers is probably fascist. Procedural application of airline security, therefore, is a "policy" that must be equally applied to all people. That is why grandmothers must be scrutinized equally against, say, young Islamic extremist males. Businessmen with a pair of nail clippers must be treated the same as one-way ticketed Islamic shoe-bombers.
Also, since "guns cause crime" expanding the use of defensive handguns to licensed concealed carry persons, former or retired police officers, airline pilots, personnel with military backgrounds, or trained private citizens is the same as letting criminals run free up and down our nation's airline isles.
Has anyone heard of any Israeli domestic flight being hijacked lately? Of course not. Why? Because Israel allows passengers (yes, passengers!!) who are qualified to be armed.
As the majority of Americans slowly awaken to the need for greater national security, I suspect that the individual right of self-defense will once again become a shining light of hope to those who see the two-fold darkness of terrorist attacks and bureaucrat-enabled erosion of personal freedoms.
[Note: You can imagine my surprise as I woke up this morning and read Dick Morris' NYPost.com column titled "It's Terrorism, Stupid" http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/49996.htm . I fully recognize that any thinking person would accuse me of plagiarism; but honestly, that is not the case. This editorial was almost finished last night and posted when an urgent call came from the wife to rub her feet. And there you have it. Dick Morris has a deadline. I have feet to rub. And that's the truth, your honor.]
http://www.calnra.org/Lolli/wl37.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
William Lolli
CalNRA Contributing Editor
June 11, 2002
The Israeli's have it right. It's no secret why Israeli Airport Security is superior to any other airport security in the world. The technique used by Israel and the "secret" is as clear as it is full of common sense: They go after the terrorists, not the weapons.
Hey. Now that is a novel approach.
Does that mean that the Israeli's are engaging in racial profiling? To American liberals and anti-Semitic wackos, absolutely. But let's face it. The very charge of racial profiling as a war technique is ridiculous.
The concept of racial profiling in a time of war against an identifiable enemy is irrational. Also the very idea of fighting terrorists while we voluntarily have our hands tied behind our backs because we are afraid of hurting some insecure person's feelings is just plain stupid.
To begin with, racial profiling has little to do with terrorist identification. Racial profiling is a liberal-activist term used to identify a law enforcement procedure used to suggest a racist method of using race-based behavior and prejudicial appearance to determine criminal probable cause. Civil rights advocates have condemned the practice as being unconstitutional. Okay. Let's say that their allegations are true. Fine with me. Racial profiling, then, is a bad thing to have foisted upon poor minorities.
But in a war against terrorists there is no need to determine probable cause. And the Israeli's know that.
Anyone who has any serious intention or commitment to providing security to a free people and a free state know to turn your preemptive attentions to the aggressor. That is why Israel's security forces scrutinize the terrorist and not the knitting needles grandma has in her bag.
The US seems to be split between two groups of Americans: those who are aware there is a war on and are taking the war seriously, and those who are perpetually self-absorbed and/or asleep.
Within the war-aware camp, there are conservatives and liberals, as you would expect.
But within the liberal camp, there seems to be a minority of American liberals who are in complete denial of reality. The members of this radical, vocal, intellectually elite-subset think that the battle to save Western Civilization can be prosecuted through politically correct, government-imposed social-policies. This vocal group also has easy access and support from the mainstream media, which makes their viewpoints easily heard and hard to ignore.
Those government policies that are not politically correct are impugned as insensitive at best, and fascist at worst.
So according to this group, arming pilots is a public danger. Arming passengers is probably fascist. Procedural application of airline security, therefore, is a "policy" that must be equally applied to all people. That is why grandmothers must be scrutinized equally against, say, young Islamic extremist males. Businessmen with a pair of nail clippers must be treated the same as one-way ticketed Islamic shoe-bombers.
Also, since "guns cause crime" expanding the use of defensive handguns to licensed concealed carry persons, former or retired police officers, airline pilots, personnel with military backgrounds, or trained private citizens is the same as letting criminals run free up and down our nation's airline isles.
Has anyone heard of any Israeli domestic flight being hijacked lately? Of course not. Why? Because Israel allows passengers (yes, passengers!!) who are qualified to be armed.
As the majority of Americans slowly awaken to the need for greater national security, I suspect that the individual right of self-defense will once again become a shining light of hope to those who see the two-fold darkness of terrorist attacks and bureaucrat-enabled erosion of personal freedoms.
[Note: You can imagine my surprise as I woke up this morning and read Dick Morris' NYPost.com column titled "It's Terrorism, Stupid" http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/49996.htm . I fully recognize that any thinking person would accuse me of plagiarism; but honestly, that is not the case. This editorial was almost finished last night and posted when an urgent call came from the wife to rub her feet. And there you have it. Dick Morris has a deadline. I have feet to rub. And that's the truth, your honor.]
http://www.calnra.org/Lolli/wl37.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878