Got an intense email about a Change.org petition
TSA: DO NOT allow knives on airplanes!
… to stop the TSA from allowing pocketknives on planes.
Ian Funderberg’s petition says:
“I am a flight attendant and this news outrages me: the Transportation Security Administration just announced rollbacks of security rules — allowing pocket knives to be carried on US planes, starting April 25. This policy would affect the safety and well-being of FLIGHT CREWS and PASSENGERS. This decision must be reversed to protect EVERYONE.”
Here’s the money quote from the petition:
… this is so sickening and unacceptable. One of my dear friends, had her throat slit with a knife on flight 93!! How dare you put all us flight attendants back into danger by allowing knives back on the airplanes??? This is despicable that you would do this..it will make our airplanes less safe, and we want to have you reconsider this and throw it out. NO KNIVES and or any other weapons needed!!! PLEASE!
I’m definitely not making fun of this person who lost his/her dear friend. BUT …
I’ve carried a pocketknife since I was about 12 years old, and in all those years have completely failed to slit anybody’s throat with it. There are millions of us out here, billions of us, who didn’t kill that woman. The highest likelihood is that people will just … you know, be people. Exercising the minor right to carry a pocketknife, causing no harm to anybody.
Yes, it’s certainly possible that TERRORISTS WILL MENACE DEFENSELESS WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND MURDER EVERYBODY ABOARD.
But the “oh-my-god-safety” argument has no end. In this case, my own stopping point has been reached.
One of my Wise Old Sayings is the answer to the malignant question “If you’re not doing anything wrong, what do you have to be afraid of?” and it’s germane here:
“If you’re not doing anything wrong, why should you be treated like the shitbags who are?”
A pocketknife comes in handy more often than you think, and I want mine right there in my pocket.
I appreciate that others might feel differently, but damn … I’m tired of kowtowing to every argument that contains the word “terrorist” or “security” in it. Enough, already.
I’m not signing the petition, nor am I supporting it.