The TSA needs to be abolished.

1.Bill of Rights 1a. Right to Bear Arms My opponent brings up the situations of a courtroom or school as a place where guns are not allowed. These are not topical to the debate, but I will go ahead and answer them regardless. A courtroom or school is a reasonable place to prohibit guns. A courtroom contains someone who is potentially willing to murder. For public safety, it is reasonable to disallow guns on the premises. In a school, students are unlikely to have guns, legal or not. The only viable reason a student would have a gun would be that they were actually planning on using it. However, neither of these applies to a plane. Take this into consideration: What is safer? A plane on which everyone has a weapon, or a plane on which only one person has a weapon? (Before I continue on this point, I'd like to point out it is possible to get a weapon on a plane, even with the TSA. Look at Adam Savage's recent experiences, he got two 12" razors onto a plane. As stated in my proponent speech, it is possible to hide up to 12" of explosive in a human body. These are simply undetectable by TSA scanners) If everyone can have a weapon, everyone can defend the plane. If only one person has a weapon, nobody can defend the plane, and the terrorist has the power. "What stops a terrorist from just killing as many people before being taken down?" The same could happen in a mall, or any other public place. It isn't exclusive to this debate and shouldn't be looked upon as a valid argument. Mass panic can be a problem, yes. If there is a terrorist on a plane, panic is going to happen. Regardless of whether or not you have a weapon, everyone is going to panic. The only difference is that with a weapon, you can defend yourself, and potentially eradicate the terrorist, allowing everyone to calm down. 1b. Unreasonable Search My opponent tends to compare my logic to other situations, so I will do the same. There is a massive war on drugs being done here in our own country. Obviously, someone has to have the drugs in order for them to be a problem. Is searching EVERY house and car in this entire country a good solution to this problem? No. Maybe it would be effective, and even eradicate drug usage in the U.S., but we simply cannot do it. That is what we give in exchange for having freedoms. My opponent specifically brings up the Underwear Bomber. The bomber was not caught by old scanners, and it has been proven that these new scanners also would not have stopped the bomber. These new scanners are simply security theater, not genuine security. "Would you, as a passenger, feel safe if you knew that many of the passengers on board were not searched just because they "seemed" or "looked" okay? Searches not only ensure safety, but the give peace of mind." In fact, yes I would. Both Israel and the U.K. use Behavioral Profiling as their method of airport security, and it's worked wonderfully. 2.Money Wasting My opponent states that almost all government agencies use money. The essential difference is that these agencies are not wasting money, they are using it proactively. The TSA is not. We need to pick the low-hanging fruit here, and get rid of non-essential money wasters. My opponent also brings up the idea of the TSA paying for these things with it's "revenue". Where exactly would the TSA earn revenue? They definitely don't sell anything. 3.Ineffective My opponent has requested a source. Here it is: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com... As my opponent pointed out, the article was posted in 2006 and may be a bit outdated. However, the problem persists. These new scanners, as I have mentioned countless times, cannot detect anything inserted into cavities, or any material that is nondense. Short of completely naked cavity searches, the TSA is not going to be able to stop every threat. My opponent has requested an alternative. As stated previously, the U.K. and Israel use Behavioral Profiling as a method of weeding out the terrorists, and it has proven effective. Dog sniffers have also been suggested as a viable alternative. 4.False Sense of Danger Sure, the media breeds a false sense of danger. They do that with a lot of things. Just look at product recalls, cancer stories, and the recent swine flu "epidemic". However, people tend to be wary of the media. They are not wary of the government. The government should not be breeding this false sense of danger! You claim that it is a real sense of danger. To quote an artice from forbes, "The odds of dying from a terrorist attack are much lower than the odds of dying from doing any of a number of incredibly mundane things we do every day. You are almost certainly more likely to die or be injured driving to the airport than you are to be injured by a terrorist once you're in the air, even without a TSA. Indeed, once you have successfully made it to the airport, the most dangerous part of your trip is over. Until it's time to drive home, that is." I'd like to thank my opponent for bringing up an impressive argument, I look forward to the rest of this debate. As I said before, if you would like sources for anything I said, just say the word. I'd be happy to provide them.