The TSA Shootings At LAX Highlight America’s Real Terror Threat [View all]

[Purveyor]

By Michael Cohen, The Guardian
Monday, November 4, 2013 14:11 EST

In 2012, 15 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks.

The previous year, more than 32,000 Americans died from gun violence (including homicides, suicides and accidents). That total represents an almost 2,600 person increase in gun deaths since 2001.

So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the first Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent to be killed in the line of duty was not slain by an al-Qaida terrorist, but rather by an American with a gun.

Gerardo Hernandez, who was shot and killed at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Friday, was tasked with protecting Americans from a threat that barely exists. Instead, he died from a threat that we as a nation tacitly accept as a “price of freedom”: practically unfettered access to firearms.

Twelve years ago this month, when Congress created the TSA, the threat from terrorism seemed real. Just two months earlier, 3,000 Americans had been killed by the worst terrorist attack in American history. Congress, acting with a level of responsiveness that in today’s current political context would seem unimaginable, established a vast new federal bureaucracy to take responsibility for protecting airplanes and passengers from the supposed scourge of international terrorism.

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/04/the-tsa-shootings-at-lax-highlight-americas-real-terror-threat/