Florida Shooting: Evaluating Nigeria, US Rules On Firearms

Aviation is global. What affects one country affects the other. The Florida shooting has exposed the loopholes in airport security, writes WOLE SHADARE

In every aviation arrangement, the baggage reclaim area is considered a vulnerable spot in airport security. The bunched up passengers serve as easy targets as they stand around the carousels to claim their luggage. It is the place where all the holes are because those areas lack the robust security available in other areas at airports.

The fatal flaw of the United States airport security was exposed when, without a word, a gunman moved through the baggage claim area, picking off travellers until his handgun ran out of ammunition, leaving five dead and eight wounded at Fort Lauderdale airport.

Panicked witnesses ran out of the terminal and spilled onto the tarmac, baggage in hand. Others hid in bathroom stalls or crouched behind cars or anything else they could find as police and paramedics rushed in to help the wounded and establish whether there were other gunmen.

The gunman was identified as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago of Anchorage, Alaska, who served in Iraq with the National Guard but was demoted and discharged last year for unsatisfactory performance.

His brother said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently. In the US and in some other climes, passengers simply have to declare the gun and ammunition when checking their bags The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) confiscates hundreds of guns a year from security checkpoints and uses social media to remind passengers how to better transport other weapons that the US government permits in checked luggage, like knives, cattle prods and throwing stars.

America’s regulations allow a person with proper licensing paperwork to check an unloaded firearm in their checked luggage.

The Transportation Security Administration requires passengers to declare weapons, which must be packed in a locked hard-sided case, according to TSA regulations. Small-arms ammunition and shotgun shells of any gauge can also be carried in checked luggage.

So far, Nigeria has not experienced gunmen entering the airport and opening fire on innocent people or a situation where a passenger lawfully checks in weapon and be allowed to retrieve it from the carousel and sporadically killed five people and wounding many others.

The worst so far encountered at any Nigerian airport is accidental discharge by law enforcement agents. That is not to say that Nigerian aerodromes are water tight in terms of security. July last year, a gun was said to have accidentally gone off at the domestic wing of the Lagos airport.

Two people were injured in the incident when a man identified as an orderly to a senator accidentally fired the shots as he was trying to remove the magazine, injuring him and one woman.

The most common security infraction is the usual stowaway incidents that have led to the death of the perpetrators. That is not to say that the country is immune from terror like security breach.

The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) as part of regulations mandates only security agents to hand over their weapons. The weapons are held in closed compartment and handed over to the owner or carrier when the passenger arrives at his destination.

The NCAA does not permit or allow weapons and other dangerous items to be checked in or carried in hand luggage. Jeffrey Price, an aviation-security expert based in Danver, said that banning guns in luggage might have prevented Friday’s attack but wouldn’t stop a determined killer. “What’s to stop him from driving to the airport, parking his car, getting his gun and going into the airport and shooting people?” he said.

Price, also an aviation management professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said that baggage-claim areas weren’t typically watched as closely as other parts of airports, like ticketing counters. And that up until now, the main concern in baggage claim areas was theft, as opposed to shootings.

He said those areas represented a particular challenge for law enforcement because there were so much coming and going in baggage claim areas, making them particularly vulnerable.

The bloodshed is likely to raise questions of whether US aviation safety officials need to change the rules. The attack also exposed another weak point in airport security.

While travellers have to take off their shoes, put their carry-on luggage through X-ray machines and pass through metal detectors to reach the gates, many other sections of airports, such as ticket counters and baggageclaim areas, are lightly secured and more vulnerable to attack.

The Transportation Security Administration has been confiscating more guns from carry-on bags in the US. Screeners took away 2,653 guns in 2015, up 20 per cent from 2014. The TSA frequently tweets photos of the arsenals that it scoops up at checkpoints.

Experts who spoke to Woleshadare.net said preventing attacks like the one on Friday was almost impossible given the large public areas at US airports, despite the billions of dollars spent on security. The debate over whether to extend security screening to public areas intensified following the bombings inside a terminal at Brussels Airport in March 2016, which killed 32 people and injured hundreds.

Some critics have cited as a model Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, where private security companies, trained by the national security agency, Shin Bet, and backed by police officers profile passengers, question individual travellers and use bomb detectors at the airport’s entrance.

Wole Shadare