Nicole Russell--Can we just abolish the TSA and start over already?

[Jilly_in_VA]

It's December. That means it's time to head home for the holidays. After purchasing an expensive plane ticket, you pack your bags and arrive at the airport, excited to sip an overpriced latte and join your loved ones.

But before you can get to your gate, you need to pass through an airport gauntlet, where a potential cacophony of catastrophe awaits. Included in that is a long line of tired travelers who are already burdened by bags, strollers and babies − and now are waylaid by the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA.

There, any number of things could happen to you in these lines that snake down halls, distracting, discouraging − or even delaying – your trip, all in the name of safety precautions long since outdated, administered by a group of employees so burdened by bureaucratic bloat that they make an appointment at the Department of Motor Vehicles look like a trip to Disney World.

Alas, it's time for us to admit, as proud, free, exasperated Americans, that we need safety at U.S. airports, but that it should be efficient and cost-effective. The TSA is neither. It should be abolished and replaced with something better.
(snip)

From invasive pat-downs and pre-dawn yelling to missing prohibited items in screenings, there have been enough problems over the past 20-plus years to question why such poor security permeates every U.S. airport.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/12/07/abolish-tsa-holiday-travel-airport-security/87586958007/?tbref=hp

ISTM that metal detectors and X-rays could do the job about as well and much cheaper, and avoid the hassles

[slightlv]

1. I haven't flown since 911..

not because I'm afraid, but because of how militarized it all got. From guys with guns walking airport corridors to TSA to you name it. And then, I got titanium in my back AND a titanium hip replacement. I have so much metal that I set off the alarm at a Marshalls dept store going INTO the store! Although I carry an official card about all the metal in my body I have no doubt it wouldn't get me anywhere with TSA. So screw it! I just happen not to have the money to fly, anyway... but the government DID take that one right and liberty of freedom of movement away from me way back when... when no one was thinking about it like that, except for a few of us unafraid dirty hippies, fighting to hang on to what should be part of the American Dream.