Take My Knife ... Please

by Bruce Schimmel

Don't you just love how professional the 44,000 new airport security personnel are becoming? How quickly they've graduated from taking orders to giving them?

They've become so polite. Now they ask to inspect you. And so clever, too, with their snappy response to your grumblings that you don't have a choice. You're totally free to say no, they say.

So, millions of travelers have opted to surrender their scissors, their corkscrews and their tweezers. Millions, indeed. According to wire services, in the year following 9/11, some 800 guns, 80,000 knives -- at least 3 million items in all -- were proffered by or pulled from travelers.

Some items were clearly dangerous -- like hockey sticks, for example, which everyone knows have no established peacetime use.

Other items have been more perplex- ing -- like safety razors or nailclippers. What are we going do with them? Threaten the pilot -- who will soon be armed -- with a shave and a manicure?

Still, all manner of hatpins, golf clubs and samurai swords have made their way into those cartons of cutlery that greet us at the gates. And this has raised some interesting questions as to how to deal with the depositors, as well as their offerings.

In Minnesota airports, tweezer-toting offenders are treated with extreme politeness. All the culpable are apparently capable of redemption, for officials in Minnesota declare that the collected items are "customer-surrendered, not confiscated."

But in one Texas airport, you'll give up your freedom along with your "weapon" (it's not clear what a "weapon" is). The Dallas/Fort Worth sheriff has been arresting people, trundling them off to jail; if Martha Stewart should ever serve time, she could pay some of her debt to society by teaching such miscreants how to crochet switchblade cozies.

And then there's the issue of what to do with the booty itself, our million points of fright.

At first, the steel barrels full of confiscated loot were said to be welded shut and sent off to be melted down.

I think we need to do better.

Perhaps barrels could be shaped like the Statue of Liberty, with an inscription to "bring us your tweezers, your crochet needles, your nose-hair clippers" and so on.

And instead of destroying knives, let's establish a "Share a Shiv" program. We could send stuff to under-resourced children, who could then sell them and spend their weapons money to better themselves.

But wouldn't you know it, the state of California is already ahead of the curve. No joke. Last month, they started auctioning airport contraband on eBay, to help pay for a state which is going broke.