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Marine arrested on explosive charges at Logan
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Comments
USMC
This young man is guilty of nothing. Being a warrior and being back home, well, welcome to AMERICA! A locked box?! It's apparent he took steps to be prudent in the transport of his weapons. Only in Massachussettes. SAD.
wtf?
We can't presume to know whether he's guilty when he hasn't yet had his trial. Since, as you pointed out, we're in America.
If you'd actually read the article, you'd see that he didn't declare his checked firearm as is required by laws here in America. It doesn't say whether the other materials are legal to possess at all on a commercial airline flight.
Is it impossible for you to separate the honorable act of having served our country from this guy being a human like anyone else who might not always abide by our American laws?
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
he DID declare the gun
according to today's Globe story:
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
I'm hoping you were just being an ironic smartass, but just in case, there are some things to remember here:
Last I checked, it is the Federal Government that handles these things, not the state government.
I don't suppose Vegas security was totally embarassed after a bunch of guys boarded planes out of their airport and blew up some big buildings. After all, they have to protect their scale model New York - isn't it the same??
I guess the guys in Vegas don't care if it stays in Vegas. Unfortunately, if Logan Security is going to attack an MIT student over some LEDs on her shirt predicated on the "but 9/11 9/11 you know 9/11" rallying cry, they better damn well stop somebody carrying actual lethal items, locked box or no.
As for his distinguished military service entitling him to carry explosives, well, that sort of talk of American heroes of war and explosives is oddly reminiscent of this gentleman's career:
Do you honestly hear
Do you honestly hear yourself or consider the facts before speaking?
He violated Federal Law. Laws that are very, very clear and quite obvious: http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/prohibited/...
The issue here isn't that Massachusetts is somehow stupid for enforcing the law (as you suggest), but how DANGEROUS it is that Nevada endangers us all by not enforcing laws created for our protection.
I hope it's just some young
I hope it's just some young kid grabbing his bag and not thinking. Wiser people have been caught inadvertently leaving their pistol in their briefcase.
Either way, he's gonna get the high hard one from the fed government.
The scary part about this story is
the bomb materials getting on the plane in any shape, form or fashion. guns loaded or unloaded are only as dangerous as the people who have them, but that bomb stuff makes you worry about what happened in Vegas.....
And it also scares me as to how dumb and dangerous how some of our military personal can be (along with the posters comment at the top).
Lets not forget that Tim McVeigh was a great soldier and veteran...
Two ways to look at it
One: Vegas TSA blew it and we're all not safe even with the rules in place because we're only as good as the people in charge of keeping us safe.
Two: No matter how many laws we put in place to keep us safe on an airplane, someone is going to be able to get dangerous materials on the plane with us. It's just a risk we'll have to take and stop limiting our freedoms with overwrought TSA rules.
Either we buckle down and go crazier about whatever happened here to make sure it "never happens again". We start asking about guns in checked baggage directly and making people take lie detectors before getting on the plane (along with taking our shoes off, unpacking all of our carry-on luggage, pour out our non-water liquids, and randomly being patted down) OR we maintain some of the regulations that can prevent the biggest problems (like no live grenade triggers, please!) but go back to sanity by keeping ourselves dressed and putting shampoo and toothpaste back in our carry-on bags.
This isn't the first huge failure at preventing a bomblike bag or test bomb through security (it's not even the second, third, or fourth...). Maybe if they spent less money and time trying to stop the next shoe bomb and focused on the seriously dangerous packages, then they'd have a better chance at not missing the forest through the trees. You have to imagine that if someone were actually *trying* to hide their terrorist act, it shouldn't be too hard to get it by these people *anyways*...so why add the extra hour of hassle if it's not mattering anyways?
"The Bomb Stuff"
Even if there was no intent to use these items as explosives, the rocket motors and other items this guy packed in his luggage are banned because of safety reasons, not terrorism reasons alone.
It doesn't matter how wonderful a guy he is, the laws of chemistry and physics don't care. Remember that flight that went down outside of Miami because there were combustable items on board that self-ignited? Unstable chemical mixtures are unstable chemical mixtures, regardless of the intent of the person hauling them along.
Not charged federally.
The guy was not charged with a federal crime.
He was booked at the State Police barracks at Logan and held in lieu of $50,000 bail. He will be arraigned at East Boston Municipal Court on Tuesday.
East Boston Court is not a federal court, it only has jurisdiction over state crimes.
This looks like an innocent mistake by a young Marine. Let's not fall into the trap of believing all of the government spin.
Absentminded 22yo does a
Absentminded 22yo does a dumb thing
TSA in Vegas, totally dropped the ball. I hope actions against them is at least as severe as it is for the marine.
If he drove drunk ...
would you have called it an "innocent mistake"?
The laws are clear, are well known, and are very easy to find if you don't think yourself so extra special. There are serious and well-enforced rules about how you secure weapons on a military aircraft, and what other sorts of munitions and explosives are permitted and how they are secured.
Stupid maybe, not innocent. If anybody should have known better, it would be a Marine.
Really?
There are serious and well-enforced rules about how you secure weapons on a military aircraft
I've carried unsecured M-16s with ammo on military aircraft along with smoke grenades and other pyrotechnics like flares and artillery simulators. What do you think paratroopers do? What do you think Marines do in Iraq and Afghanistan? Weapons are all over the place.
After being in those places, he might have developed a relaxed attitude and thought he was fully complying by putting stuff in a locked box.
This wasn't a military flight
He allegedly carried the stuff onto a commercial flight.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Yes, we know that.
I think SG was trying to make a point stating there are strict rules about weapons on military aircraft and analogizing it to the Marine's commercial flight. I was making the opposite point.
Were you Army then?
In the early 80s at least, the Navy and, by extension, the Marines, very strictly trained us about securing weaponry on transports, particularly aircraft.
Maybe the Army wasn't so very careful about this stuff - then again, the Navy had had some really ugly accidents during the Vietnam era with malfunctioning and improperly secured explosives.
In any case, rocket motors come with warnings and instructions that say things like this:
Since Marines are most certainly not illiterate, I would think he would have bothered to look into the matter of carrying guns and ammo and rocket motors on civilian aircraft, no? To not bother is to be excessively wreckless.
sure, but things are different now
Yes, I was in the Army, during peacetime.
But now, there have been years of servicemembers easily carrying weapons onto helicopters, C-130s, C-17s and chartered commercial aircraft since the wars began. Not to mention living with and using weapons and explosives. It leads to a more casual mentality.
What I object to is the characterization of innocent items as "bomb-making material." Wire is a bomb making material.
Innocent items
Fuze assemblies? Parts of actual bombs (i.e. grenade and land mines)? It's unfair somehow to describe these as "bomb-making materials?"
I'm not saying he wanted to kill anybody with a bomb, or do anything wrong in any way. He probably just wanted to blow some shit up in his back yard for a larf. It's still illegal to bring that stuff on airplanes, and for good reason.
Nothing really unfair is going on here. The bummer is that the dolt has probably ruined his career in the Marines. Bad choice.
Be more afraid
They probably never would have seen the bomb materials if it wasn't for the mass of ammo. The automatic alarms on the screening equipment only alert to organic explosives, not inorganic like black powder. It was probably the metal casings on the ammo that set off an alarm for shielding. Without that alarm from that amount of ammo, no screener would even have looked at an image of the bag.
The part that amazes me is the politicization. On the one hand, he must be one of those dangerous right-wing militant types. On the other hand, it's a gummint conspiracy.
It'd be nicer to just think about the facts. He broke the law. Supposed to declare the handgun. The handgun is supposed to be unloaded. And the bomb stuff is a no-no under a plane. So interrogate him to make sure he's not a wacko, give him a fine, and back to camp with him.
Personally, I think it's no big deal. Of course he likes to shoot things and blow shit up. Why else would he be a Marine?
Exactly!
If you dare to imply that someone in the military may have made a mistake, then you clearly hate freedom and hate the troops.
If you aren't absolutely and completely outraged that weapons exist and aren't calling for this guy to be sentenced to life in prison, then you're also some wacko nutjob who goes around blowing people up.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com