GOV/MIL Security Theatre For All: NY Lawmaker Pushes for Metal Detectors Everywhere

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://reason.com/blog/2015/07/29/security-theatre-metal-detectors-fear

Security Theatre For All: NY Lawmaker Pushes for Metal Detectors Everywhere

"Something has to be done" is generally an indicator of a bad, reactionary policy.

Anthony L. Fisher|Jul. 29, 2015 3:40 pm

Not one to let a good tragedy go to waste, New York State Senator Tony Avella (D-Queens) is working on legislation which would require theaters, malls, and stadiums to install metal detectors.

Avella told WINS-AM that in the wake of last week's movie theater shooting in Lafayette, LA, he decided "something has to be done and when you think about it, it’s hard to realize that we live in a different world; but we do."

The senator plans to fund the presumably thousands of new metal detectors through a "public-private" partnership, which naturally means citizens will be on the hook for financing the growing security theater industry through both taxes and the costs that will be passed onto them by the businesses forced to install and maintain expensive machinery.

As Matt Welch and I have written previously, the now-mandatory metal detectors at Major League Baseball stadiums are not nearly as sensitive as airport detectors, making their effectiveness largely based on deterrence. To Avella, the airport-style misery soon to be bestowed on any experience in which large groups of people are assembled is well worth it if it saves even a single life.

Security expert Walter Enders, who is decidedly not in the "do something, anything" camp, said this about metal detectors at stadiums:

You're trying to get in the door, there's 20,000 people standing around outside. I could do a lot of damage there, just as easily as I could if I brought the thing inside. Maybe even more.
Feelin' so safe out here in this angry mob.
Anthony L. Fisher

I had the same thought a few weeks ago, when I was stuck outside Yankee Stadium for almost an hour after the game had started, among thousands of other hapless fans herding ourselves into something vaguely resembling an orderly queue, all in the name of our safety. I looked out at the angry, impatient, confused crowd and thought that just one person intent on sowing chaos and mayhem wouldn't even need a gun or an IED; something as relatively innocuous as the explosive pop of a cherry bomb would have caused a stampede, sending people fleeing into the Bronx's busy six-lane Grand Concourse.

Try to imagine this level of generalized suspicion every time you go to a movie, a mall, a restaurant, a high school graduation, all in the name of "doing something" for our own security.

I would never be cowed by the terrible but highly unlikely prospect that I might be killed by a mass murdering gunman or a terrorist attack, but intrusive and excruciating security theater at the movies might be enough to make me just stay at home and watch Netflix.


Anthony L. Fisher is a Writer/Producer for Reason.com and Reason TV.
 

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/07/28/metal-detectors-theaters-malls-stadiums/

NY State Senator Working On Legislation For Metal Detectors At Theaters, Stadiums And Malls

July 28, 2015 6:33 PM

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Coming to a theater near you: metal detectors — maybe.

State Sen. Tony Avella (D-Queens) has announced he’s developing legislation that would require theater, indoor mall and stadium owners to provide enhanced security, WCBS 880’s Alex Silverman reported.

“Either a metal detector and security or security officers with the wand that they can wave,” he said.

The move comes amid a string of mass shooting events across the country.

Avella said he immediately began developing a legislative solution following the theater shooting in Louisiana last week, 1010 WINS’ Al Jones reported.

“Something has to be done and when you think about it, it’s hard to realize that we live in a different world; but we do,” he said.

Avella said he knows it will cost money, so he plans to include as part of the legislation a public/private partnership “where the state will pick up half the cost.”

As for the potential inconvenience of metal detectors, Avella said it would be worth it if it saves just one life.

Last August, Yankee Stadium started using metal detectors at Gate 2 and installed them at all gates before the start of this season.

The move was part of Major League Baseball’s 2015 mandate to standardize security at all 30 ballparks.
 

Vtshooter

Veteran Member
As for the potential inconvenience of metal detectors, Avella said it would be worth it if it saves just one life.

Spoken like an Elitist who won't have to stand in the same lines as every one else. Every single person should have to go through the detectors. Players, umps, team owners, skybox big wigs. Everybody. I'm tired of this "just one life" justification for bullshit laws. Think of all the things people die from, and how these assholes could use it to push laws for our own good. What's next, a law against large sodas? Oh, wait.

Coming soon, abortion free Fridays, no tobacco Tuesday, and alcohol free weekends. Because if it saves just one life......
 

raven

TB Fanatic
weapons are made of evil "Metal"
BAN METAL
Send miners of metal to the guillotine.
Send manufacturers of metal to the guillotine.
Send all purveyors of metal to the guillotine.
Guillotines are made of metal.
Make guillotines out of wood.
....
BAN ALL WOOD!!
 

vestige

Deceased
NY State Senator Working On Legislation For Metal Detectors At Theaters, Stadiums And Malls

He's a nitwit knee jerker.

I'll bet he looks under his bed every night before retiring.... probably doesn't have a gun to deal with a boogeyman if he saw one under the bed.

Keeps his cell phone ready to dial 911... just in case.

He's a pansy.
 

Secamp32

Veteran Member
And who is going to screen all these people? In NY it would be unarmed minimum wage security guards. I feel safer already.
 

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
And who is going to screen all these people? In NY it would be unarmed minimum wage security guards. I feel safer already.

Yup, though I wouldn't put it past the those guys making them hire union "public-private" partnership personnel from Acorn.
 

fporretto

Inactive
While I have no truck with the "metal detector mentality" -- I could never get past one armed as I normally am -- I'd like to suggest that the sort of place where metal detectors and stringent security measures have appeared and are likely to appear in the foreseeable future are good places to stay away from.

Crowds mean trouble. Sports venues, regardless of the sport, have become places where courtesy is an undefined term and the writ of law does not run. The pattern of South American soccer riots is being reproduced here, especially at football and basketball games. Shopping centers have begun to look pretty dicey as well, owing to the phenomenon of "mobbing," the newest pastime of black teenagers. Even the sort of crowd that collects outside a large store on Black Friday can cause injury or death...and for what?

It's not the threat of terrorism that I'm thinking of. It's about the decline of general civility and the readiness of far too many people to become belligerent, even physically violent, at a moment's notice.

The need to subject oneself to a crowd has been nicely reduced by recent developments. I make use of it, despite my wife's insistence that "I really need new shoes" (she doesn't) and "It's not the same as being at Madison Square Garden" (my point exactly). She keeps accusing me of being a misanthrope. Perhaps that's the case, but at any rate, I'm egalitarian about it: I avoid everyone equally.

Time was, the only hazard an American had to fear in a crowd was a pickpocket. That was then. This is now.
 

Jez

Veteran Member
Wouldn't it be easier to just demand people wear nothing but bikini's and speedos? Or better (actually worese) ban all clothing at all time? :rolleyes:
 

Lilbitsnana

On TB every waking moment
Wouldn't it be easier to just demand people wear nothing but bikini's and speedos? Or better (actually worese) ban all clothing at all time? :rolleyes:

Then they would still have to do body cavity searches....(I didn't even want to go there...but it's what they would do)
 
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