Now several news organizations have been saying that the TSA plans to allow pocket knives with blades under 2.36 inches long in carry-on luggage. Not sure when exactly they plan to change the policy, if they do. Which is nice, although my leatherman's blade is about 2.4 inches. Not sure how strict they'll be. I've been leaving it at home because it's not worth the $50 round-trip fee (plus the torn-up luggage) to check a bag. $50! I usually don't even have that much worth of stuff in my bag - it'd be cheaper to travel with nothing and hit up a Walmart at your destination. Box cutters will still be verboten, although they can be effective weapons at shorter than 2.36 inches. I suppose this makes sense to somebody. It makes me wonder why they are thinking about changing the policy. Especially since I had thought up a business idea to have a small setup outside airport security where you put down some money for a similarly-priced tool to use while at your destination, then when you come back you can return the tool and get some/most money back. If they damage the tool or fail to return it, there's no monetary loss for the business owner. And the customer gets to test-drive a nice Leatherman or Swiss Army Knife. A business for the travelling man who can't bear to be without his multitool, but is too cheap to check his luggage! But not everybody is giddy about the prospect of being treated slightly less like criminals or children at the airport. My local news website has an article lamenting how this means there will be fewer goodies for government agencies to pick through. Well boo hoo.
But only for international flights over distances of more than 122.56 miles. And only for passengers shorter than 8.23 ft. Because when safety is at stake, precision counts!
Actually, 2.36 inches is almost exactly 6 cm, so maybe whoever came up with the number had been thinking in metric and decided to translate it.
6cm is actually kind of long. You can really hurt someone with that kind of blade, if you try. I wonder how they decided it was safe?
Any pilot you can kill with a fuckin' pocketknife never deserved to live in the first place. Same with people so allergic to nuts they can't even smell them. How in the fuck did the sperm that make you even work?
I'm pretty sure this rule is designed specifically as a Swiss Army Knife exception. I bet 6 mm is the size of their standard blade. There is more to the restriction than that, such as the blade not being fixed, not auto extending, etc. It's a pocket knife, something that really is not very useful in a fight.
^ Aye, I've imgined that in a fight if all I had was the leatherman I'd probably be best off chucking it at somebody's head than trying to use the blades.
Actually, a leatherman might be more useful because gripping the handles leaves the blade securely extended. The issue with a non-locking folding blade is that the stabbing motion will usually cause the blade to fold back inward, slicing the grip hand.
Swiss Army Knife? By the time you found an actual BLADE after sorting through screwdrivers, pliers, trout fly tying forceps, leather awl, ass wiper, etc. etc. the aircraft would have landed.
Not mine; its blade is on the outside. So you don't have to open the pliers part to get to the knife.
I've no problem with this. People are still going to fight terrorists trying to hijack. In fact even if the hijackers have knifes there is going to be other people standing up with their own pocket knives.
I suppose their reasoning is that you cannot destroy a plane with it (the way you can with an explosive, which is why liquids will still be severely restricted), but only attack someone to use as a hostage, the way it was done on 9/11. But there is no way the scenario would play out today as it did on 9/11. Anyone who said "Open the cockpit door or we'll slit the throat of this stewardess" will simply have everyone in the plane attacking them. A few people could get hurt, but a terrorist doesn't want to settle for hurting or even killing a handful of people and then getting out of it alive only to be arrested by the police as soon as the plane lands at the nearest airport (if that's all they wanted to do, they can do it more effectively and with a better chance of getting away safely on a public street). So the change in people's behaviour (which occurred even before the 4th airplane reached its destination on 9/11; there never was any justification for rules like "No knives on planes") means that confiscating children's rounded-end scissors was absolutely stupid and intended only to show that "we're doing something".
Talk about being a wimp..... 6cm scares you? Do you faint when someone hands you a butter knife? You're not going to take over an airplane today with a knife of any size because the passengers won't let you nor can you even get through the cockpit doors.
Guess it depends on the Leatherman. I have a small one that turns in to scissors (with a sharp point) when unfolded, that's what I was thinking about. Mine would be suitable for stabning, but I guess most of them turn in to pliers?
Sounds like you have a Micra. I used to have one, but it went missing off my key chain a couple of years ago and I haven't replaced it. I liked it because the screwdriver tools were the perfect size for many of the screws on my work equipment.
Both of mine unfold into pliers. The knife blade thing isn't new IIRC. You could carry-on a pocketknife before 9-11 and no-one thought twice about it.
It is hard to hit a vital organ with a blade shorter than 3". Of course you can hit arteries and such, but that's the rationale.
So if three inches seems to be the minimum length for effective deadliness....how did terrorists make a jet crash using box-cutters, blade length being about half of the maximum knife length?
This is pretty close to the last thing I ever expected the TSA to do. I wonder which politician was flying commercial and got pissed, because there's no way they did this for common-sense reasons.
