Does anyone really like the TSA?

Following 9/11, the Transportation Safety Administration was stood up to try and prevent bad people from bringing bad things onto planes. As a result of that, though, the agency has made determinations that frankly border on the stupid about what constitutes a “bad thing” in this case.

Couple that with the fact that the TSA hasn’t caught a single terrorist yet, and you’ve got reason to roll your eyes at them.

But they did catch a member of Congress with a gun. Again.

It seems that now congressional Democrats are wanting the agency to do something about these guns.

The Democratic leaders of two major committees sent a letter to the Transportation Security Administration about its plans to address guns on airplanes after Republican Representative Madison Cawthorn was caught trying to transport a gun on an airplane.

Representatives Bennie Thompson, who is chairman of the the House Homeland Security Committee, and Bonnie Watson Coleman, who is chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security, sent a letter to TSA Administrator David Pekoske.

The letter specifically highlighted how Mr Cawthorn, the embattled North Carolina Congressman, was recently cited for carrying a 9mm gun at Charlotte-Douglas Airport, as WSOC9 reported. This was the second time Mr Cawthorn was caught with a gun at an airport, since he tried to bring a gun on his carry-on luggage at Asheville’s regional airport.

“Two incidents in such a short period of time should raise our collective alarm regarding repeat offenses involving a firearm. Accordingly, we urge the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to act decisively to ensure repeat offenders like Rep. Cawthorn face the full extent of TSA’s enforcement actions,” Mr Thompson and Ms Coleman wrote in a letter.

My question is, how can you be alarmed about guns on airplanes when clearly, the TSA caught Cawthorn before he boarded.

It sounds like the system is working as it should.

If this is about the fact that Cawthorn isn’t being penalized more egregiously, the lawmakers might want to remember that TSA just screens and confiscates contraband. They’re not actually law enforcement and they certainly don’t make laws or, more specifically, punishments.

If TSA has a problem, it’s not that they’re failing to keep weapons off of planes–though that’s probably happened a few times. It’s that they’re too ridiculous in some of the stuff they confiscate from people–things that are clearly not firearms unless, maybe, you live in a James Bond movie.

Don’t get me wrong, I kind of feel dirty about defending TSA, but I fail to see how Cawthorn’s actions tell us anything about what TSA isn’t doing correctly.

The truth is that Cawthorn is the one who isn’t doing what he’s supposed to.

Look, in my ideal world, it would be possible to sit in the cabin of a 767 and admire one another’s guns because you see them hanging on their hips. Open, concealed, any way you want to carry would be fine.

But we don’t live in that world. We live in this one and in this one, you can’t carry a gun onto a plane. Cawthorn has tried to do it more than once.

If these two have an issue, it’s with Cawthorn.

But taking it up with the congressman wouldn’t allow either of them to make a big stink and get their name in the press, so they do this instead. It’s grandstanding at its finest.

Especially since they know that even if Cawthorn had gotten the gun on the plane, nothing would have happened to anyone.