Thread by @davidfrum

A man tried to carry a gun aboard a plane. Detected, he lunged for the weapon and (apparently unintentionally) fired it. Three people were hurt. Injuries non-lethal, but who wants to suffer a bullet wound because some dumbass can't be separated from his security blanket? 1/x

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1462414745164824583

The incident made national news, with a lot of emphasis on how "accidental" the whole incident was. Except, it isn't really all that accidental, is it? 2/x

Whatever the true intentions of the Atlanta airport gun carrier, the United States has engineered a gun-law system that encourages people to carry guns everywhere they go. And indeed, if guns are welcome now at churches, schools, bars - why *not* a plane too? 3/x

As of mid-October -well before the holiday flying season began - the TSA had apprehended 4500 weapons at airport check-ins, a 20-year record. But the statistic is even worse than it sounds, because air travel is still depressed from pre-pandemic peaks. 4/x

In 2019, the TSA apprehended some 4400 guns - but that was 5 guns for every 1 million passengers screened. The 4500 guns as of mid-October 2021 = 11 for every passenger screened. IE gun carrying by air travelers has doubled since before the pandemic. 5/x washingtonpost.com/transportation…

When caught, gun carriers often say they "forgot" they had a gun in their bag. If true, that's not an encouraging indication about the mental acuity of America's gun owners. But fairly obviously, it's not true. They just have that little respect for laws and rules. 6/x

American culture valorizes the so-called responsible gun owner. But American law doesn't do much to sift the responsible for the irresponsible. And there are maybe 50 million more guns in Americans purses, belts, and backpacks post-pandemic than there were only two years ago. END

Update/correction: The three people injured at Atlanta after the gun shot at TSA did not suffer bullet wounds. They were caught up in the rush of passengers who feared that an active-shooter massacre had erupted at the airport. 1/x

Fortunately for the air travelers in Atlanta, the mass shootings for November 20, 2021, occurred instead in Fresno, California (2 dead, 2 injured) and Berwyn, Illinois (4 injured). gunviolencearchive.org/mass-shooting

It's incredible that Americans choose to live this way

Anyway, here's my article from earlier this fall about the myth of responsible gun ownership, in @TheAtlantic theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

@TheAtlantic Impressive, in a way, how much uproar has been raised over critical-race-theory while thousands of attempts each year to smuggle guns onto airplanes barely rate news mention.

@TheAtlantic I'd call America's indifference to gun carnage a "dog bites man" story - only I just looked it up, and an American is more than 10x as likely to be shot by a gun as bitten by a dog seriously enough to warrant hospitalization. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19364181/

@TheAtlantic Serious dog bites are actually reasonably rare. More than 300 Americans, however, are shot every day. bradyunited.org/key-statistics