An assault on liberty?

[Peter Wayner]

I realize that many will use this event as an excuse for many 
political agendas, but I think it's important that we think through 
exactly what happened. It doesn't seem like it was an assault on 
liberty or a misuse of the liberties we have. Most people can't fly 
planes. The learning process is long and the licensing requirements 
are many. Flying a 757 is even more restricted by both cost and 
licensing requirements. It's not a liberty like walking around the 
streets or speaking one's mind.

It doesn't seem to me that this attack had anything to do with 
liberty. It's not like someone abused the right to bear arms by 
shooting someone, it's not like someone abused the right to speak 
freely by libeling someone, it's not like someone abused the right to 
drink alcohol by plowing into a school bus after drinking too much. 
These guys were unauthorized to have knives, they were unauthorized 
to have bombs, they were unauthorized to fly 757s, they were probably 
unauthorized to be in the country. Yet they did all of these despite 
the controls.

The hard lesson is that controls don't always work. Licensing 
requirements, security checkpoints, and armed guards fail. It's sad, 
but there's no physical law like gravity that we can depend upon to 
keep ourselves safe.


If you ask me, the biggest danger is that we'll add more ineffective 
security measures in the hopes of doing something.  And the real 
problem is the controls may never be enough to keep us safe.

-Peter