Has a single explosive device ever been found in a shoe at airport security in the last two decades that wouldn’t have been found if the person had just walked shod through the scanner?
Related: has a single explosive (substance?) EVER been found in 3.5+ ounces of water or conditioner brought to the airport?
Meanwhile: How was the Russian disinfo campaign for Trump in 2016 and the insurrection of 1/6 insurrection not stopped? We are always afraid of the wrong things.
Roughly 674 million people fly yearly in the US. More than 10.12 BILLION people since the rules went into effect. Imagine if instead of the expensive unjustified panic about Islamic terrorists, resources had been directed to thwarting white nationalist terrorists and their arsenals.
All that was happening in plain sight. Visible on Christmas cards, Gab, 4chan, Trump’s tweets. Facebook. Didn’t even have to take a microscope to 3.5 ounces of clear water or search the shoes of toddlers.
Maybe profiling is always bad but if they pulled aside everyone with “I oil my gun with liberal tears” t-shirts they’d probably get some shooters.
Signed, the Committee for More Actuaries and Less Racism in the U.S. Government (CMALRUSG).
I pay particular attention to where we do or do not choose to count. The inconsistency of collecting data on violent weapons use and police stops are the foundation of our inability to draw meaningful conclusions on steps likely to make progress. It's often intentional - a 1997 law limited CDC's ability to capture injury data that could be used to argue for weapons control (they can legally only count data one group of lobbyists likes I guess?).
The 2/2020 nonsense with delaying the Diamond Princess docking in San Francisco was reported as being a counterproductive Administration effort to limit COVID counts in the U.S., even as it would lead to cases spreading on the ship. We've still never gotten a productive explanation for why the White House entirely changed the existing process for hospitals to reporting daily infectious disease counts from the politically unpopular CDC to the DHS (the civilian Department with the least restrictive civil service rules).
TL;DR. Counting is good. We should do it more. People who muck it up aren't your friend, and probably are the kind of people who make the terrible cookies at the bake sale.