Ben Franklin Wasn't Kidding

When he said "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." I'd add that they end up without either as well.

So why the hell do we have full-body scanners in airports?! Do I need to point out that last year, 33,963 people died in traffic collisions, with a fatality rate of 1.16 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled - the lowest rate on record! Meanwhile, from 1990 through the end of 2009, only 4,735 people died in commercial airline crashes*, INCLUDING the people who died in the WTC and Pentagon on 9/11/01! That means in 2009 alone, 7 times more people died in car crashes than died from airline crashes in the previous 20 years combined!

Well, if you're going to strip search (via x-ray), pat down, and metal-detect every passenger going onto an airplane, why not do the same to everybody getting into a car? It would certainly cut down on the number of drunk driving deaths and cut drug smuggling to nil! Would you consider THAT an invasion of privacy?

Okay, so your argument is that airlines have a higher rate of deaths per mile traveled? True, including the 9/11/01 events, the rate for commercial airlines is 3.39 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, nearly 3 times the current rate for motor vehicles. However, if you exclude deaths on the ground (but still include those who died aboard the 4 planes) on 9/11/01, the rate for air travel suddently drops to 1.44 deaths per million miles traveled for the 20 year average - less than the 20 year average for motor vehicles (which was 2.08 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 1990 and didn't drop below 1.4 until the mid 2000's)

Still, even taking the higher number, consider the train: according to the Federal Railroad Administration, there were 106.24 deaths per 100 million rail miles traveled in 2009! Not only is this rate more than 30 times the rate of deaths per air mile traveled, but in absolute numbers, about 3 times as many people die in rail accidents as in commercial air travel crashes every year!

So, more people die each year on average in automobile and rail collisions than die as a result of airline crashes, yet only the airlines are subjected to these draconian measures? This tells me that something other than concern for the loss of civilian life is behind this scheme. At the very least, it would be a whole lot cheaper in economic terms (and probably in direct cost to the government as well) to put an air marshall on every flight than it is to force every passenger to arrive early to go through "security" measures, pay rent-a-cops to patrol the gates, and buy extremely expensive radioactive scanners, metal detectors, etc., etc.

At best, allowing and encouraging civilians to carry their own sidearms onto airplanes would have prevented the vast majority of deaths that occurred on 9/11/01, (which, incidentally, is more than half of all airline crash deaths in the past 20 years) while preserving our liberties, privacy, and pocketbooks! Imagine that! Preserving freedom would have bought you that safety you wanted!

*This includes scheduled and non-scheduled section 121 flights (standard commercial airliner), as well as scheduled section 135 flights (connecting or commuter flights with smaller aircraft), but does NOT include non-scheduled section 135 flights (air-taxi) or general aviation flights. Source: National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB does not include the 2727 people who died on the ground on 9/11/01 in their figures.