LAX Shooting

At approximately 9:30A local today, a whackjob from New Jersey began shooting TSA agents at LAX, with a rifle he'd cleverly smuggled into the airport by putting it in a bag, underlying motive(s) as yet undisclosed. He apparently hit three, and killed one, thus buying a ticket in the federal death penalty sweepstakes (Go Team Lethal Injection!) Within moments of his attack, a Los Angeles Airport Police officer or officers fired shots that wounded the suspect multiple times (and hey, NYFPD, they hit ZERO bystanders! What a concept!), ended his rampage, and for all intents and purposes, ended forever any further criminal activities for the rest of his natural life as a free man. (Yay, great police marksmanship! Nota bene criminal dumbshits and crazies, an airport is NOT a Gun Free Zone. Heh.) That return fire was evidently the last demonstrably intelligent activity of law enforcement or government in that zip code detectable with existing instrumentation for the entire balance of the day.

At this point now (note: updated as of 11/2), well over 700 1500 flights inbound to or outbound from LAX, the nation's 3rd busiest airport, have been affected, including delayed, cancelled, or diverted. Passengers on arriving planes immediately afterwards were held incommunicado on board aircraft for hours with no updates, getting better news from smartphone apps than airline officials, then let out into terminals and held incommunicado for another good bit of time by law enforcement officials, and again with no explanations. When they were finally turned loose, it was on foot, as all roads into and out of the airport complex were closed to all but official traffic for nearly ten hours after the incident, long after it was clear to anyone with brainstem activity that the incident was over in the first 5 minutes. Passengers, including wheelchair-bound/handicapped and elderly, were left to fend for themselves in making a trek of 3 or more miles to exit the airport complex and fend for themselves for further transportation or assistance. Passengers present in the terminals at the time of the attack were cleared out immediately, in many cases minus all belongings, and again sent on their way for the same Bataan Death March to exit the premises.

There are 7 HUGE primary passenger terminals at LAX, IIRC. The middle one, at the top of an inverted "U", is the international terminal, adjacent to the shooting. Arrivals and departures take place on separate levels. The shooting itself took place in Terminal 3. By some point tomorrow, they expect to reopen the other six terminals, but all of Terminal 3 is closed until further notice.

My condolences to the victims and families of the wounded. I would not wish this fate on any of them, but I do confess to a hope upon initial reports that this was the result of some frequent flier who'd been groped one time too many, and finally snapped.

But long before the details are released, one thing is absolutely clear: there haven't been as many retarded people all in one place at one time as there are at LAX today, since whenever they held the last Special Olympics.

Today's unredeemed and inexcusable biblical level of pandemonium, chaos, and associated disruption, traffic jam, and destruction of public order was clearly not the result of one lone whackjob shooting three unfortunate targets.
It was the concerted unpreparedness, negligence, incompetence, and calculated and studied stupidity of countless bureaucracies, agencies, and generally useless buffoons who populate almost every finger stuck in this pie this morning from top to bottom, other than the few good or lucky bastards who shot straight at today's assclown du jour when it counted.

And there is also clearly one way today's senseless tragedy could have been totally avoided: disband the TSA completely and absolutely, immediately and forever.

It's clearly an idea whose time has come.


But wait! There's more!: The Fairytale Version The Official After Action Report