Digby makes an excellent point in the aftermath of the Miami Airport shooting Wednesday:
The marshalls were obviously persuaded that it was quite possible that this man had a bomb in his carry on bag. And apparently, the marshalls went through the plane after the fact, looking for accomplices, pointing guns at the passengers and knocking cell phones out of their hands ostensibly because they thought they might contain guns.
Now I know that the marshalls are taught to shoot first and ask questions later and all that, so no lectures please. But I still find it amazing that after all this time, they automatically assume that a group of people could get a bomb and “cell phone guns” through the gate security in a US airport. Goes to show you how useful all that boarding gate crap really is, doesn’t it?
The system worked??? How about there were several witnesses that said the man never uttered anything about a bomb. I see no reason for a shoot to kill policy. This reaks of the same trigger happy nonsense that got a Brazilian man killed in London, for having a bag and running in the train station. God, when was the last time you saw someone in a subway station with a bag, running to catch a train???