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 agents, officer, rather to be armed. that said, after i reported that i got tweets back from some tsa agents out there who disagree with that position and feel like one of them wrote to me unarmed sitting ducks but that s at least the union position, and to be clear, it s not like there aren t loads of armed agents running around an airport like that. there are 2100 tsa
i mean, it s already illegal to bring a weapon into an airport so not like you can pass another law saying we ll make it more illegal to do that. for those who think tsa agents should be armed, what do you think? a big mistake. you have literally hundreds and hundreds of armed police officers roaming every major airport in america and i don t think arming another 40 or 50 or 60,000 people, i m not sure how many employees there are would have prevented this incident from happening. when the individual removed the firearm, began firing, the response mechanism kicked in. i personally think that s a very bad idea. this is an unspeakable tragedy, anderson, and i know we ll be questioning the motives of this particular individual but at the end of the day, anderson, if you and i did this show a week from now, there would probably be 3 or 400 other people dying because of firearms homicides and we re not quite sure what their motives will be but this
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 there is not there s not that many layers you can put before you get to that screening. no, but there is a lot you don t also see involved in aviation security. i was with delta airlines after law enforcement. i was general manager of delta airlines during 9/11. since 9/11 there are more layers of security from that front door, even when you just enter the grounds of the airport, on the roads leading up to the airports, anderson, that people don t see. there is surveillance cameras, there are people there are law enforcement officers and tsa folks in plain clothes also armed. there is a lot of layers you don t see but i m sure they will look at this because it still is troubling that this gunman was
destruction. sources say he had three magazineses of ammunition for his assault rifle. we are getting new details about the alleged killer including items that might speak to a motive for today s rampage. deborah feyerick has details. reporter: we re learning he wasn t targeting tsa agents. and we know that because of statements that he made as he was walking down that terminal. he asked one man whether in fact he was with tsa. when the man replied no he continued walking. there were a series of text he sent between his father and brother and described as a cause for concern. they were angry, rambling in them he was complaining about the government, complaining about los angeles, he was unhappy, discouraged. and all of this took place over the last couple of days. it was enough to cause concern amongst the family. we re now told search warrants are being executed on homes that he had in los angeles but also a residence in new jersey as well where his father lives.
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