a major major incident working here at l.a.x. los angeles international airport 9:20 a.m. local time. the fbi says paul anthony ciancia 23-year-old white male enters terminal 3, pulls a rifle from a bag and opens fire. at the security checkpoint tsa officers were not armed. one was killed. he proceeded up into the screening area where tsa screeners are and continued shooting and went past the screeners back into the airport itself. authorities say after shooting his way through the security checkpoint, the gunman manages to make it all the way down this hallway. they say he s stoppeded by authorities here near a burger king in the food court area. hundreds run for their lives. it was a complete panic. people were screaming. i saw children crying. sheer and utter mayhem. people were tripping over each other on the floor, bags everywhere, crying, screaming.
other side of the metal detectors kind of overseeing everything, isn t that correct? it s not really practical to think about arming tsa officers. in order to do that, you have to make them a sworn law enforcement officers. there is all kinds of costs and training and other implications to doing that. i think the question tsa deals with and law enforcement agencies and stake holders involved is what is the response time? how quickly can we get there? how do we assess the threat today versus the threat last week or next week? and that might make a difference in whether you have a law enforcement officer at the check point, have a law enforcement officer roving, have a law enforcement officer at the departure gang way and those kinds of things. because mike, in that initial entrance to the airport, whether it s in the united states or overseas, you do sometimes see even heavily armed security personnel wondering around, but
issue, but again, it s a cultural violence. there are many aspects to it. this is just one more horrible incident. not to take away from the tragedy. it s unspeakable. and there s a lot of pain and suffering. but we really have to start thinking a lot deeper and doing a lot more than simply talking about the violence of firearms. and the indication that this person was specifically asking people whether they were with the t sa. interesting. does that surprise you? well, it s bizarre. listen, you and i both know let s go back to timothy mcvay, anderson. we know there are some people who have turned to violence. god forbid just awful violence. you go look at oklahoma city because of grudges or hatred or whatever the evil, the dark side, the emotion in their heart and their head, and that s the excuse and that s the motive. but then again, i think in 2010 there were like 12,000 firearm
military or law enforcement background and as a result of that, the coordination and the seamless response that you saw today is the result of over 12 years now of working and assessing what the threats might be and assessing how to conduct the response. i think the important thing is to think about resiliency and say when this occurred, the law enforcement officers knew where to respond, how to respond in short order and through good coordination. that airport got back open for partial traffic operations in a matter of hours. is it clear to you yet how the shooter was able to get from the initial contact he had with tsa officers all the way into to where the gates are? does that part of it known yet? that does not seem clear at this point. obviously, if he had a rifle, opened fire, and took a run through one of the check point
correspondent is in washington. j jim, they ruled out terrorism, correct? they are always reluctant to rule it out and say the investigation is continuing. they don t see international terrorism. international terrorism. he was targeting tsa agents like evan perez said, he was carrying materials on his person, but not terrorism as we think of it in general. certainly in terms, as you said, that s the distinction we would make, international terrorism. was the tsa prepared to handle this? do we know much about that specific check point and how he was able to get through? speaking to folks at the tsa, they focus on keeping weapons and other dangerous things off the airplane. they tend to leave the shooting to trained shooters and in fact, i spoke to the head of the tsa union today and he said that s one thing they haven t asked for. they haven t asked for their