Editorial: Arming the T.S.A. Is Not a Solution

Police are still piecing together the details of Friday's fatal shooting at Los Angeles International Airport, but it appears as if the gunman, Paul Ciancia, targeted Transportation Security Administration agents. In response to the attack, the union representing T.S.A. screeners said the agency should arm certain employees and assign them to checkpoints. The administrator of the T.S.A., John Pistole, said he would discuss changes to security protocols with Congress.

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Arming T.S.A. screeners seems both overly reactive to the Los Angeles shooting and impractical. The agency doesn't train its agents to use firearms or recruit employees who would know how to handle themselves in a shootout. It would be extremely costly for the agency to reimagine itself as an airport terminal police force. Besides, it's not at all clear that armed agents could have prevented Friday's shooting.

Mr. Ciancia pulled an assault rifle out of his bag at the terminal before reaching the security screening area. According to court documents, he had a handwritten note saying he wanted to "instill fear" in the "traitorous minds" of T.S.A. agents, and he mentioned conspiracy theories. It is not known whether Mr. Ciancia has a mental illness, but there is no divorcing this incident from the broader context of the nation's gun problem. That he went on a shooting rampage at an airport is largely incidental; the problem is that he had easy access to a firearm.

If every shooting in a public place led to a new class of law enforcement officers, America would look like a war zone. We would have armed ticket-takers at movie theaters, armed clerks at malls and armed teachers at schools. That's an outcome the National Rifle Association would love, but that should worry anyone who doubts that more guns are the only answer.

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