From nothing to Knives.

The TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) is considering letting passengers carry small lengths of knives on planes. Ever since 9/11, the TSA has been granted funding for the use of protecting more and more passengers. This funding has limited multiple different common day to day, household used items; This includes the limit of liquid that you can carry in a container in an airplane, the very simple ban on all forms of weapons and most commonly inconvenient, the ban of items such as nail files/clippers, bags over a specific weight and many other “dangerous” “weapons”. This idea suggested by the TSA would allow any passenger carry a knife with a blade onto a plane. With this would come several restrictions such as: It cannot be a fixed blade on the knife, the main blade has to be shorter than 2.36 inches and the knife may not have a modeled grip. This would be the first time in 12 years that such items could be carried onto planes and thus making it a possible breakthrough or downfall of all American airlines.

 

This is a very confusing subject to discuss. Every year, you hear stories of TSA agents harassing regular people over the simplest of items. You see prosecution placed on most races of people that attempt to fly, then this idea comes out. I personally believe that the TSA is attempting to make up for some of its many faults as an Administration in the past 12 years. Let’s be honest, no terrorist is going to attempt to take a fully loaded plane hostage with a nail file. They are not going to use their restricted 500ml shampoo boodle to beat people over the head with. These previous restrictions really did not do anything in the ways of preventing terrorism, and this new idea of knives on a place is no different. The length and width of the knives listed is so small that unless you feel really confident in your ability to fight off several hundred people with a blade less than 3 in’s long, you will not be planning the next terrorist attack with these little picket knives. In actual fact, most rules and restrictions by the TSA and the flight administration are completely made up, just to prevent any actual problems from coming up. The limit of liquid in a container? The weight of your bags? The way you look? These are all measures put in place to make it seem like an attack in impossible. It prevents the everyday American from bringing large amount of drinks onto a plane. It prevents him from packing extra clothing and it determines based on skill colour if he will get patted down for more weapons. So what I believe is that this will not affect airlines in any way. In fact, I believe that this is a step forward for all aviation.