laststandonzombieisland

(From a series of articles I did this week at Firearms Talk)

These days, with all of the increased airport security since 9-11, you would think an airport in the US is the safest place in the world. Well a nutcase at LAX this week proved otherwise.  Lets take  a look at how it used to be.
Lod Airport Massacre

Over forty years ago in 1972, a team of three Japanese terrorists, members of the Japanese Red Army Faction went on a shooting spree at Lod Airport in Israel. These Asian born radicals were loaned out to the PFLP, a Palestinian group who believed (correctly) that Asians would be less likely stopped by Israeli security. They carried Czech Vz58 assault rifles provided to the PFLP by the North Koreans. These guns, along with spare magazines were secreted in violin cases. When the shooting stopped, 26 lay dead and another 79 injured. Two of the three terrorists were killed that day and the third, injured, served 13 years in an Israeli prison. In 1978, the Mossad rubbed out the Palestinian ideas man who planned the attack for his troubles.

In 2012, a group of lawyers won a $378 million lawsuit against the North Korean government for their part in this crime.

Hijackings
Airliner hijackings peaked around the same time as the Lod Massacre. Between 1968 and 1977, the annual average number of
aircraft hijacked in the world was 41 per year . Since then the number of hijacking incidents have fallen to ‘just‘ 18 per year on average around the globe.

In 1970 Palestinian gunmen forced four planes with a total of 400 people on board to fly to the Jordanian desert, where the hijackers blew up the aircraft after releasing most of the hostages in exchange for seven Palestinian prisoners. This, remembered as the Dawson’s Field hijackings, led to the creation of the Federal Air Marshal program by President Nixon.

However, airliners will always be under the threat of hijackings as witnessed by the events on September 11, 2001 when four jetliners were diverted by 19 international terrorists in the United States and flown into high value targets. This led to the TSA and an increase in the Federal Air Marshal Program. The first screens passengers for weapons and the second rides shotgun so to speak with armed agents on selected aircraft. Last year alone, unarmed TSA screeners found more than 1500 firearms on would-be passengers on US flights.
Rome and Vienna

Moving to attack Israeli targets in Europe, a team of seven members of the Abu Nidal Organization attacked two separate airports at the same time. Four gunmen went to the Israeli El Al Airlines ticket window at Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome while another three went to the El Al counter at Vienna. Coordinating their attacks, both went loud at 0915 27 December 1985.

Firing Syrian supplied Soviet-made AKM assault rifles and lobbing hand grenades, the terrorists killed 19 civilians and injured another 138. The high injury rate is due to the fragmentation grenades filling the air with shrapnel. Four of the gunmen were killed, the other three captured. These captured ANO mercenaries (Abu Nidal was more hitman that idealist) got 30 year sentences.
A few years ago, a group of western lawyers won a $25-billion judgment  against the Syrian Arab Republic, Syrian Air Force Intelligence, and General Muhammed Al-Khuli for their state sponsorship and involvement in these airport massacres. Like the North Korean judgment, it will likely never be paid.
Increased Security
After these three incidents, there was a massive increase in security in both US and European airports. In Europe, this came in the form of local police and in some cases military police armed and equipped to get in a close quarter battle with a small group of armed terrorists. If you have ever flown into a quiet, immaculately clean European airport and seen cops armed to the teeth with HK burp guns and 5.56mm rifles, it’s because of Lod, Rome, and Vienna.

In the US, these three attacks led most airports, especially large ones with regular international flights, to create dedicated Airport Police forces. These forces range from small 10-person departments at single terminal airports to the immense 1100-member (not a misprint) Los Angeles Airport Police Department. The LAAPD is, in fact, the largest police agency in the United States dedicated exclusively to 24-hour airport activities.  This department responded to the latest airport active shooter.
The LAX Active Shooter
This past weekend a deranged gunman, seeking apparently to teach TSA a lesson of the gravest sort, attacked a large international airport in the US. This attack at Los Angeles International, although violent and aggressive, could have been worse.

Mad man with a gun
As noted above, while most of the 503 commercial airports in the US that have regular passenger service have TSA baggage and flight inspectors as well as Federal Air Marshals that fly through them, these airports are not ‘owned’ by the federal government. With that in mind, local law enforcement, or contract security are usually responsible for the actual protection of the airport. This is due to jurisdictional issues with the FBI stepping in to investigate terrorism incidents.
LAX is therefore protected by 1100-member Los Angeles Airport Police Department, the largest of its type in the United States if not the world. It was this department that took on one 23-year old active shooter, identified as Paul Anthony Ciancia in November 2013. While reports are sketchy, what is known is that a roommate dropped Ciancia at Terminal 3 of LAX at 930 on Friday morning on All Saints Day. Unknown to the roommate, Ciancia was not catching a flight but rather a date with destiny.
The shooting

Armed with a legally owned Smith and Wesson M15 5.56mm semi-automatic sporting rifle concealed in a bag along with five spare magazines, the man went directly to the TSA baggage checkpoint. There he encountered TSA screener Gerardo I. Hernandez, a 39-year old father of two and immigrant from El Salvador. Ciancia allegedly shot the unarmed Hernandez, striking him multiple times. He then walked away to find more victims but returned to deliver a coup de grace style execution shot to the prostrate Hernandez.

Wandering away from the checkpoint to deliver more damage, Ciancia wounded two other TSA employees and a teacher who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The LAAPD engaged the active shooter and ended the threat with a shot to the gunman’s face with a .45ACP service weapon. While the  ‘bullet knocked his teeth out, split his tongue and blew away part of the madman’s face‘ he was not killed and is currently in custody at a medical facility, facing charges of murder of a federal officer and commission of violence in an international airport which could send him to death row. Found inside the gunman’s bag was a note that said he wanted to “kill TSA.”
Criticism of unsecure checkpoints
Although the LAAPD responded rapidly to the active shooter, there is already open discussion of why an armed officer was not at the TSA checkpoint to help secure it. According to a CBS News article, “Recent changes made at LAX have armed officers roving around the terminal and required to be within a five-minute response time instead being stationed within 300 feet of every screening area.”

This is not the first time that TSA officers were assaulted at unsecure checkpoints. At Honolulu airport in April, a vacationing California police officer had to intervene in an attack on an unarmed TSA screener. The off duty and unarmed cop took down the assault suspect only after he observed no other security or law enforcement officers in the area.

Active Shooter concept validated

This goes to show that a dedicated law enforcement force prepositioned can be very effective in eliminating active shooters. In police thinking in the old days, if there were a shooter who was actively killing people, responding officers would secure the area and wait for a tactical team to arrive. This type of thinking kept the responders outside Columbine High School in 1999 for more than 45 minutes while two shooters roamed the halls, firing at students and setting off homemade explosives. Now, most departments realize that time waiting translates into lives lost and receive instruction on how to handle active shooter incidents. The LAAPD had just within the past few weeks conducted an active shooter exercise.

A clear parallel is drawn in the 1985 Rome airport attack. There a single Israeli Secret Service agent stationed in Rome and at the airport at the time of the attack noticed the shooting and immediately reacted.  It took him 20 seconds to end the threat caused byl three of the terrorists  and seriously injure the remaining one. Other members from his team came running from other parts of the terminal to help out, but it was all over by the time they arrived. After an autopsy was conducted, it became clear that this one single agent had neutralized all the four terrorists: only bullets fired by this agent were found in the bodies of the terrorists.
At LAX, there were enough good people with guns to handle the bad one this time.