GUEST EDITORIAL – Grandma and Grandpa aren’t likely to hijack a plane
(Image: CATSA.gc.ca)
A guest editorial from Don Staff in place of Jim Harrison’s CHNL editorial:
MY WIFE and I went to Ontario last month to visit relatives. Which means that twice we were subjected to the inconvenience and indignities of airport security.
Do I think that security is necessary? Yes, I do. There are a lot of crazies out there that use aircraft as an outlet for their frustrations or fantasies. What I object to is the way it’s carried out, to the point that I’m beginning to hate flying. Other than going through a metal detector, most of it is an exercise in futility.
The questions that those in security should be asking themselves are: how many people over the age of 40 have ever been a dangerous problem? How many women have hijacked an aircraft? How many children? Why am I subjecting people to a gunpowder test?
That’s the silliest one, especially in rural areas. How many males in a town like Smithers, for instance, are hunters and are quite likely to test positive? Is the security community aware that certain hand lotions and some insect repellents will cause a positive result? What happens if you get a positive result when in most cases it means nothing?
What’s more frustrating is that a lot of the flying public accept our present security system as a necessary evil. It’s not! I know that it’s politically incorrect to point it out, but in the last 20 or so years, all terrorism events related to aircraft have been committed by young adult males of Arab or East Asian descent.
Israel is the most dangerous place in the world to fly and also one of the safest, because the most important part of their security is racial profiling. That’s what should be foremost in our security’s mind, not the possibility that grandpa or grandma might have exploding underwear.
Thanks for letting me vent.
DON STAFF
Listen to Jim Harrison’s editorials weekdays on Radio NL, and to the Jim Harrison Show at 9:08 a.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at jharrison@radionl.com.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
So you’re annoyed with airport security. No kidding. Who isn’t?
And sure, it’s necessary, but you don’t like it, so it’s not necessary to you? Okay. You will find no one who doesn’t believe the same.
Who, if not everyone, should be subject to airport security? Brown people? Anyone under 40? Anyone with a tattoo? Surely none of these new rules could be exploited.
Give me a break. Airport security has been mere theatre since the early aughts. If there was any kind of scientific data available for profiling, it would be statistically insignificant because there have been almost no credible threats exposed.
Not to mention the fact that if the parameters included people who had prohibited items taken away from them before boarding, I bet your senior age group would be public enemy #1 – probably because you think you shouldn’t be subject to the rules. That’s some kind of radicalism.
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