Garrison Keillor: Guns on a plane

[billbuckhead]

Guns on a plane

The way to stop terrorists on planes is to encourage passengers to bring loaded firearms aboard. Where's the NRA when you need 'em?

By Garrison Keillor


Sept. 13, 2006 | And now you can't bring your cup of coffee on board the airplane. It's the latest new rule laid down by the nation's security wizards. Everyone knows it's ridiculous -- the notion that you can toss together a few liquids and make an explosive is a fiction from late-night movies. You might as well prohibit bald men on the grounds that the evil Lex Luthor was bald and so was Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE.

But we ditch our venti latte in the trash barrel (goodbye, four bucks) and board the flight, and there we read in the paper that aggressive CIA questioning of an al-Qaida bigwig -- stripping him, turning the air conditioner to 40 degrees, blasting him with Red Hot Chili Peppers music -- broke him, so he ratted on Jose Padilla, a terrorist who set out to make a dirty bomb and who believed that by swinging a bucket of uranium in a circle over his head he could separate plutonium. It's like a cartoon.

The way to stop terrorists on planes is to encourage passengers to bring loaded firearms aboard: guys in orange vests sitting in exit rows with deer rifles on their laps, ladies with Mr. Colt in their purses, kids with peashooters. Somebody wake up the NRA. Does the Second Amendment say "The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed except on commercial airliners"? Where is the right wing when you really need them?
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<http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/09/13/keillor/index.html>

[gully]

1. He he.

That first line is "killer."

[VelmaD]

2. holy shit! he's right

Aren't these the same right-wingers who tell us carrying concealed firearms makes us safer from muggers and rapists and serial killers? We should all be packing heat in hip holsters to protect us from the terraists.

[madeline_con]

3. WOW! I had no idea GK was this ignorant.

"...the notion that you can toss together a few liquids and make an explosive is a fiction from late-night movies."

I'm sorely disappointed. :(

[Patchuli]

5. Um, it's not really that easy to do

especially in a plane bathroom.

[John Q. Citizen]

6. Have you ever done it or know someone who has? n/t

[Dhalgren]

7. Keillor is right. It is next to impossible to combine liquid agents

into an explosive compound. It takes hours to do, hours to dry, and requires the types of equipment and ventilation that you just cannot get on an airplane. The whole story of the "combining liquids to make explosives on airplanes" was a stupid hoax and any half decent chemist will verify that...

[Generic Other]

4. Oh mercy!

:rofl:

[omega minimo]

8. Well there's the problem right there--

"But we ditch our venti latte in the trash barrel (goodbye, four bucks) and board the flight"


Fucking four dollar cup of coffee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Warren DeMontague]

9. The Red Hot Chili Peppers have made some decent music.

Shoulda hit him with Celine Dion, NKOTB, or the Osmonds.

[Broken_Hero]

10. I recommend a full assault with NKOTB....:) nt

[grasswire]

11. I suggest John Ashcroft's CD

Cruel and unusual punishment, that.

[Warren DeMontague]

12. You know, come to think of it, maybe he DID make us safer!

"Please! Can't you waterboard me instead? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo~!"