I respectfully disagree. Please see this story and check the follow up. http://www.mrt.com/top_stories/article_5d5a6a76-33d8-11e1-9b9a-001871e3ce6c.html?mode=jqm This man had already been through one checkpoint. And his bags possibly went through other sniffers. It was a particular location that obviously was better than the others. But they (the TSA) catch idiots trying to carry guns and other weapons onto commercial airliners all the time. Do you really want to go back to the days of "lowest bidder " contract and have someone have an accidental discharge of the gun that got missed at the checkpoint going off on a plane your riding in? Its not always about highjacking. Maybe if someone (not the guy in the article) snuck a bag of explosives onto the plane just wanted to blow it up, IE; Lockerbee? What if the guy in the article DID want to blow up a plane and make a statement like McVeigh? He would have succeded on his first trip. That has happened, and has been attempted multiple times. Just not from a US point of origin to my knowledge. I guess I'm not making a point that every body else understands. I've lived in Iran before the Shaw was exiled, and West Germany during the Bader Meinhoff, Red Army Faction, Libian attacks, firebombings of military installations that included assasinations against US officers, enlisted personell and dependant housing. I think the system, while it might be flawed has kept us a little safer than our friends across the pond. Yes it can be improved, but I remember bombs going of at the frankfurt main airport, and, in one case an armed assailant inside the secure area of the same airport in the late 80's. This was an airport where security was so tight, you had to walk down the jetway stairs to the tarmack and put your hand on your bags and declare them before they would put them in the luggage hold at the time. While that can happen anywhere, I think we're (the US) doing pretty good in comparison. But this is all based on my own experience of having lived the alternative