I'm not defending TSA policy. Far from it. In fact, I've preached in the past that they try to solve movie type scenarios for no reason. But if you wanted to live in a civilized society, you have to live within the boundaries that the society provides for you. And what you're proposing is that throwing the book at someone that didn't cause a dangerous scenario but did break a rule won't solve anything. That's a breakdown of how it works. If you don't like it… go and try to change it as a politician. Hell, I'll vote for ya, cuz I think some of the things they are pretty ridiculous. Other things though, like the checkpoints? Annoying but necessary.

And hate to break it to ya, but National Guard did actually have security detail after 9/11. I had to go on plenty of business trips back then, where you had to pass checkpoints with Guardsmen with M16s. It ended in May of 2002 or something like that.

And about the vault example, you're missing something big. In the airport case, you have three actors: Jiang, the TSA/federal government, and the travelling public. In your example, the only actors would be Jiang and the TSA. People aren't angry at Jiang for getting past security, they're angry at him because his actions delayed or cancelled their flights. They're angry at the *TSA* for allowing him to slip by.

A better analogy would be this: imagine a vault built in the basement of a 30 story building. A man walks into the vault, not because he wants to steal some gold, but because he just wants to stand in the vault (remember, the TSA (guard) wasn't created to prevent kissing couples (standing in the vault), but to prevent bombings (stealing gold) — so then, Jiang didn't “steal gold”). Now lets say that any unauthorized access to this vault results in every single sprinkler on all 30 floors to go off, ruining papers, computers, clothes, etc. Whose fault is it that the sprinklers went off? I'd say it's the fault of the moron who designed the security system.

Think about it this way — an airport terminal is large. If you wanted to hurt a lot of people, wouldn't you force a terminal evacuation, get everyone in a tight and confined area (see: pictures of the unsterile area jammed with people), and then do something? There needs to be a better and smarter way to deal with breaches than creating a dangerous scenario. Throwing the book at someone who clearly had no malicious intent won't solve that problem.

That said, it's pretty clear that the massive and disproportionate response to something that was clearly harmless suggests that our airport security system might need some rethinking.

But in this case, this wouldn't have happened if the TSA personnel didn't leave their post either. I saw the security tapes. If I'm not mistaken, the guy just gets up to go off somewhere. Probably use the restroom or something. But, the issue with that is that in the military, you would be relieved by someone or you get someone to watch over your post. That didn't happen, so TSA had some fault there for having the security breach. That's why I said above that I would prefer military back in. There are very strict guidelines that military personnel don't cross that poorly paid security personnel sometimes do.

TSA bears fault, but so does the person that caused it (Jiang), since it's practically beaten into you when you arrive, leave, or travel at all through airports on what the rights and wrongs are. If you choose to break that policy, then you pay the consequence regardless of whether or not they opened it up for you.

What you're basically saying is…. if the penalty for taking a gold coin from the vault is death, but someone left the door to the vault open and invited you in… as long as no one saw it, the death penalty law wouldn't apply since there wasn't anyone standing guard. Except for the fact that laws don't work that way. Ever. No point in laws otherwise if people didn't abide by them.

If someone build an apartment complex that burns to the ground anytime a child playing baseball sends the ball through a window, do we blame the child or the builders?