Frank, you haven't said others shouldn't have your rights. You've only said others aren't qualified to have the rights, without ever (even here, I note) ever including yourself as being undeserving. Even here, you make the point of showing how you make the decision to disarm yourself. Semantic? You bed? Hair splitting? Of course. But over a few hundred posts on a few dozen threads, a pattern emerges among speech patterns. Am I going to go reviewing your posts to pull you some cut and pastes to put up the montage that you're presenting to us? No, I'm not. I'm genuinely sorry that I don't have it ready for you-- I don't want to come across as vague. But I'm just not so invested in this discussion that I'm willing to do the research. Discount my comment, if you wish. (I feel sure my encouragement is unnecessary.) But it's there if you wish to mull it over.
Look, there have been times in which you and I have argued the same side of an issue, with regard to procedures for obtaining probable cause or the validity of reasonable suspicion for stops and frisks. But the thing is, I feel uncomfortable with a whiff of entitlement that I keep getting from your corner.
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There are a couple of different directions that this thread has gone in. First, Coop de Ville asked the reasonable question about carrying off-duty on the plane. Following the National carry for cops of 206, it's an understandable question. So there's first the question on the facts-- what does the TSA require? That's been answered. Then there's the question of the philosophy-- why should this work? What's the reasoning behind disallowing the police, who have been carrying aboard airlines for most of a century, to carry aboard airlines? Then there's the CCW question, that's gone pretty far afield from the original question.
We've progressed into an indictment of police and their abilty to make shoot-don't-shoot decisions in airplanes. I'm still trying to decide who meets the Frank Drebin criteria of being qualified to carry at will on airplanes. The small department cop "who goes from run to run in Mayberry taking reports" (without a partner or backup, making daily split-second decisions to draw or smile and wave in suspicious circumstances, having to do every aspect of law enforcement in a small department without specialization, and who arguably is far more well-rounded than the highest-paid big department tac team member) doesn't get your vote if he hasn't drawn his gun off the range lately. The funny thing is, he can come to answer calls for service, armed. He can drive home off-duty, armed. He can go on vacation from my state to yours (I don't know where you are but I'm pretty sure you're not a Texan), armed. He just can't get on the airplane with you, armed. Is that not kind of odd to you? Just a little? This guy has the power to make on-view arrests, stop traffic, etc, but can't be trusted to go armed in that place, you're telling me?
Okay. Fine. I'll just let you run with that, Frank. Please expect some of this crowd (and not just LAK) to run with your comments about the questionable qualifications of police in the next Probable Cause issue thread.
, but anyone even half as sharp as Frank can duplicate damned near anything, and fix it so that the most intense checks will come back clear. Frank is a true genius and an artist, but I suspect there are others in this world that can do the same thing. By the way, if you've never seen "Catch Me If You Can", it's a great flick and a true story!