TSA disarms sock monkey!

There it is again.

"Under longstanding aircraft security policy, and out of an abundance of caution, "
 
Hey guys, I feel a LOT safer working at LAX knowing those hard Working Professionals are on the JOB (at the other side of the airport where they have NO access to ME) :)
 
I love stories like this. The first thing I do after I read the story is peruse the comments. They are absolutely priceless.
 
The TSA told NBC News in a statement: “TSA officers are dedicated to keeping the nation's transportation security systems safe and secure for the traveling public. Under longstanding aircraft security policy, and out of an abundance of caution, realistic replicas of firearms are prohibited in carry-on bags.”
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Oh come on, TSA... you know you did something stupid just own up to it and laugh with the rest of us.
 
I will be flying out of STL Thursday. Now were do I buy an gun toting sock monkey :D
 
If someone sold sock monkey's, this time of year coupled with TSA stupidity would be a great way to get some free advertising and sales for their business.
 
I want to buy a sock monkey and dress him up in a TSA uniform. I wonder if I could get it through TSA.


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The TSA agent said:‘If I held it up to your neck, you wouldn’t know if it was real or not,’

Really???? Is it too much to ask of those charged with our security to have some basic knowledge about firearms? :dunno:

I have a marketing idea for the victim in the story. Make some sock monkeys in TSA uniforms with their heads firmly implanted between their butt cheeks. :D
 
Perezhr said:
I want to buy a sock monkey and dress him up in a TSA uniform. I wonder if I could get it through TSA.


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They'd probably mistake him for a supervisor.
 
That sock-monkey lady is a marketing genius. She needs some free publicity for the product -- so she sticks a toy gun in it, takes it to the airport, then calls a reporter. Brilliant!

It's a great scheme to get attention.

May sells the dolls and had several sock monkeys and sewing supplies in the bag. One of the monkeys, named “Rooster Monkburn,” after John Wayne’s character “Rooster Cogburn” in the movie “True Grit,” is a cowboy with a two-inch long pistol.
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Threefingeredjack said:
The TSA agent said:‘If I held it up to your neck, you wouldn’t know if it was real or not,’

Really???? Is it too much to ask of those charged with our security to have some basic knowledge about firearms? :dunno:

I have a marketing idea for the victim in the story. Make some sock monkeys in TSA uniforms with their heads firmly implanted between their butt cheeks. :D
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That I'd buy. And carry with me when traveling.
 
This would have been more exciting if the TSA had attempted to disarm a Trunk Monkey.
 

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Still several times the size of a plastic sock monkey "gun", and would get your ass severely beaten and probably laughed at in the event you tried to hijack a plane with it.
 
DaleB said:
Still several times the size of a plastic sock monkey "gun",
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Yep!

...and would get your ass severely beaten and probably laughed at in the event you tried to hijack a plane with it.
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Possibly, but I still would not want to get shot with one!

Jim

(I just noticed that the cuss filter did not catch your wordy dird!)
 
Kiddo's Driver said:
Possibly, but I still would not want to get shot with one!
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Nor would I... but a hijacker's chance of surviving an attempt now, regardless of how he's armed, are minimal. Given the choice between sitting quietly waiting for impact or being dispatched by a .22 (or a .45 for that matter), I'd be happy to take a few rounds as long as I went down fighting. At some point you have absolutely nothing to lose, so you may as well make the most of it.
 
DaleB said:
Nor would I... but a hijacker's chance of surviving an attempt now, regardless of how he's armed, are minimal. Given the choice between sitting quietly waiting for impact or being dispatched by a .22 (or a .45 for that matter), I'd be happy to take a few rounds as long as I went down fighting. At some point you have absolutely nothing to lose, so you may as well make the most of it.
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Plus, holding the crowd at bay is based on perceived threat. Between sure death and being shot by that tiny thing it is an easy choice. Not very intimidating... "He has five shots and there are 20 of us. If we do nothing we all die." Easy decision.

Jim
 
UPDATE from the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

LAMBERT AIRPORT • Air travelers have surrendered 25 prohibited weapons that were found in their carry-on bags in St. Louis this year.

"Some people still just don't get the word," Federal Security Director Bill Switzer said today during an afternoon news conference. "It's amazing also ... some folks still try to bring a weapon on board."


Switzer said there were 12 weapons surrendered to the Transportation Security Administration in St. Louis in 2012. So far this year, there have been 25 weapons.

TSA officials today also displayed a wide range of prohibited items, including knives, a baseball bat and tools.

Apparently, the sock monkey pistol confiscation was all about driving numbers!

You can see the table full of dangerous weapons here. A garden spade, tin snips, a paint can opener/roller cleaning tool, a backpacker's poop shovel, etc. All horribly dangerous stuff! 13 million passengers a year and this was their haul. Nice job folks.
 
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Can you imagine some guy standing up in front of a crowded airliner with a garden spade saying, "I represent the Mujahideen Liberation Army and I am taking over this airliner!"? After the laughter died down he would have that garden spade forcefully returned to his posterior hiding place and the flight would continue normally.

"Weapon", sheesh, come on Bill Switzer.
 
Alexb2000 said:
Can you imagine some guy standing up in front of a crowded airliner with a garden spade saying, "I represent the Mujahideen Liberation Army and I am taking over this airliner!"? After the laughter died down he would have that garden spade forcefully returned to his posterior hiding place and the flight would continue normally.

"Weapon", sheesh, come on Bill Switzer.
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Not all that long ago a few guys stood up with one inch blades in the form of box cutters and took over four airplanes. So it could be done.

Will it be done again or will people rise up to stop them? The popular theory is yes, but I put forward that the current airline environment is teaching people to be even more sedate, quiet and non confrontational than ever before. Will they rise up or only bleet like the sheep they have been trained to be?. I'd like to think they would rise up, but I still hear people say that the TSA is keeping passengers safe. So I ad,it it may just be a conceit that people would fight back.


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I think it's been demonstrated a couple of times now (dumb-ass attempted bombers) that no one is about to sit idly by and let an airliner be hijacked or blown up.
 
ScottM said:
Not all that long ago a few guys stood up with one inch blades in the form of box cutters and took over four airplanes. So it could be done.

Will it be done again or will people rise up to stop them? The popular theory is yes, but I put forward that the current airline environment is teaching people to be even more sedate, quiet and non confrontational than ever before. Will they rise up or only bleet like the sheep they have been trained to be?. I'd like to think they would rise up, but I still hear people say that the TSA is keeping passengers safe. So I ad,it it may just be a conceit that people would fight back.


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In the past I would have kept my seat, because usually it was worked out with the terrorist and that was the guidance we all had. I can't answer for others, but in that situation today I don't care if the guy has a sub-machine gun it's going to be a fight to the death. Further, I almost wish some guy would do that with a garden spade, so the world would see how we American "sheep" react to a high jacking now.
 
ScottM said:
Not all that long ago a few guys stood up with one inch blades in the form of box cutters and took over four airplanes. So it could be done.

Will it be done again or will people rise up to stop them? The popular theory is yes, but I put forward that the current airline environment is teaching people to be even more sedate, quiet and non confrontational than ever before. Will they rise up or only bleet like the sheep they have been trained to be?. I'd like to think they would rise up, but I still hear people say that the TSA is keeping passengers safe. So I ad,it it may just be a conceit that people would fight back.


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I was under the impression that the passengers on flight 93 had, like everyone else, been taught not to fight back, but what changed their minds was that they found out that the terrorists had in mind. Once that information became known, there's no way to un-know it.



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This is Bureaucratism, it is not just the TSA, it is in every single bureaucracy in the nation, public and private, legions of Americans who have become so accustomed to following the rules to the letter, that they have lost the ability to think on their own, or use what was once known as sound judgement, or their own good judgement.

It started out as just a few rules and regulations, but as people started losing their ability to actually think on their own, rules had to be made that covered every aspect of their working lives.

Our judges in courts of law are now considered incapable of using their own judgement, so sentencing "guidelines" have now been established. A life sentence for stealing a slice of pizza makes perfect sense to them.

All of our public schools are churning out millions of bureaucrats every year, rule followers and team players. Children who show signs of individual thought ability are labeled and drugged so that they are "manageable."

Our bureaucrats have become so damaged by "the system" that even their free time in retirement is spent doing familiar things in set order so that having to engage their brain is as rare an event as when they were working.

Our once world famous American ingenuity has now become the ability to know which rule book to refer to.

Those Zombie movies were not all that far fetched....make up might have been a little overdone.

I have to add; there are many exceptions in such jobs as Air Traffic Control, police, even the military. The bureaucrats have been desperately trying to engulf those folks in regulations, but no matter what they do, most not only can think fast, they can and do....do it on their own.

-John
 
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I did discover at St. Louis Lambert Airport that a cork screw is OK as long as it does not have the small little knife on it.

Not me but the guy in front of me in the security line. TSA made a point of pulling it out of his bag look over it and then say there is no know so it is OK.
 
ScottM said:
Not all that long ago a few guys stood up with one inch blades in the form of box cutters and took over four airplanes. So it could be done.
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Only because prior experience had been to go along to Cuba or wherever, let the guy get off, then go home.
9/11 was a one-shot event. That tactic was obsolete the same afternoon when the passengers on Flight 93 learned what was in mind. They used the SYSTEM and its ASSUMPTIONS against us, not box cutters.
Subsequent attempts to take over planes or ignite bombs have been intercepted by passengers.

Most importantly, the reinforcement of cockpit doors, addition of Federal Flight Deck Officers, and rules to not open the cockpit door regardless of demands have removed the "takeover" hijacking as a viable tactic.

TSA screening for simple hand tools has no effect on eliminating takeover hijackings, it's for show, pure and simple. The items easily available on the plane are more dangerous than the stuff they are prohibiting you from carrying on.
Screen for explosives? You betcha.

The problem is, we are screening for dangerous things rather than dangerous people. Dangerous people are dangerous with whatever is at hand, and I can make implements more dangerous than a box cutter.
 
ScottM said:
Not all that long ago a few guys stood up with one inch blades in the form of box cutters and took over four airplanes. So it could be done.
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At the time, all hijackings had followed the basic pattern of seizure, diversion, landing, negotiation and either raid or release. Passengers were disarmed and told to cooperate rather than offer any kind of resistance, certain that they would be inconvenienced then safe again.

The only reason they resisted aboard United 93 was because they had heard about the other planes. However, by then, the terrs had control of the flight deck. If the passengers and crew had resisted from the beginning, they would have easily won.

So it wasn't the box cutters that enabled the bad guys to take over, it was people allowing it to happen.
 
We can never afford to relax - terrorists are constantly probing our defenses looking for weaknesses. This is clearly an attempt to determine if TSA is smarter than a 4th grader.
 
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