I didn't say that guns are illegal!
ohh and the owner is licensed not the firearm.
I was trying hard to limit the pedantry of this dialogue, but if you *really* want to get into that, then fine. Yes, the owner is licensed. The firearm is registered, which is similar to licensing. I thought the distinction was too small to bother with muddying up the sentence by changing it to: "Guns are not illegal, if the owner has a valid licence, and the gun is registered in accordance with that license and with the state-specific firearm licensing acts, and the gun is being carried in accordance with that act, and no other acts or statutory regulations are being breached."
I inferred that you were using illegality as the distinguishing characteristic to claim guns are not analogous, because you made no comment as to any characteristic other than illegality in your sentence dismissing guns as an analogous point. I see that have now explained why you think they are not analogous:
The failure of the analogy IMO, is the ability to infer intent from someone trying to concel a firearm, vs someone who has a water bottle, or whiskey, in their carry on bag. My 5 year old takes a bottle of water with her everywhere, it is pretty easy to determine her intent in carrying that water.
This is one of the reasons why we have a permissive policy of confiscation only, which in turn is one of the reasons the entire policy is a waste of time. An attempted illegal carriage of dangerous liquids will
appear perfectly harmless and go undetected, in part because it seems like such a harmless mistake.
Your pointing this fact out does not defend the policy; nor does it undermine the analogy. The comparison was drawn simply to show that there must be a disincentive attached to attempts to breach security. The analogy shows that there are two classes of item that both potentially represent threats (in this way, they are analogous), and yet only one of them is subject to penalty (in this way, they are differentiated).
I also think you're making too much of this idea of an "unlawfully quantity of liquid". There is nothing illegal about having any quantity of liquid airside, the restrictions related to the source of the liquid. Duty free purchase airside = good, grog purchased at a bottlo = bads. Same quantity, different source.
The illegal act that I was referring to in my post (
vis. attempting to illegally enter a restricted airside area with an unlawful quantity of liquids) referred to the conduct of entering an area with said liquids. Again, for the sake of brevity, I didn't write out that entire phrase in full each time, although it makes no practical difference when we are discussing security screening procedures at entry points.
If we take your example of multiple dodgy characters trying to get a quantity of liquid explosive past screening until one of them finally succeeds, then post confiscation screening will pick this up and help to be alert for the follow up attempts to get the liquids past screening. Seems useful to me.
So post-confiscation screening will alert the authorities to the fact that people are attempting to smuggle 'liquid explosives' (I will use your term, again for brevity, despite its inaccuracy)? Didn't they already know that? Isn't that why they're restricting LAG? (Yes, even though I think it's a pointless response).
Also, don't forget that there is no penalty for leaving the security screening point to empty your bottle. Or (in the USA) for simply leaving when it the LAG are found and trying again at a different screening point. Or handing it over to an associate.