I find it far more likely that the attitude of any armed TSA personnel who are put into the airports will be more like, "Now we have guns and tasers and can arrest these vile passengers. NOW we'll finally beat the respect into them that we've always deserved!" And of course, the remaining unarmed TSOs will adopt a very similar attitude: "Now we have armed TSOs backing us up. NOW we can do whatever we want, any time we want, and NOBODY can fail to respect us or we'll turn our armed brothers loose on them!"

It will be a disaster, not for the agency, but for the people. And I guarantee that there would be at least one beating, one tasing, and one shooting by these GestapTSOs within the first year of their deployment.

This is why I have great fear that it will happen. Pistole will see a grand opportunity to finally arm his army, and at the same time increase his share of the budgetary pie and maybe even escape some of the cuts that are inevitable in the next few years; he will naturally want to create a new, special, armed LEO force within TSA, rather than arming any existing TSOs, because that will mean a hiring binge, construction of multiple new training facilities, and the creation of a law enforcement force which the AG will naturally say has the power to search anyone, anywhere, any time, for any reason whatsoever or no reason whatsoever, because they're "transportation related" and covered by the administrative search doctrine.

The AFS crowd has one response to that, which does have a kernel of truth behind it - shopping malls cannot be turned into portable weapons of mass destruction like planes.

But the real danger of such a comparison is that, when it is pointed out that we don't allow this sort of thing at shopping malls, fearful and paranoid people will reply, "Well why not? Look at Kenya! That could happen here! Kenya was a practice run for the Mall of America! We NEED this kind of security at ALL of our shopping malls!" And TSA's mission creep will expand further...

As I said, I don't believe that many, if any, existing TSOs would be converted to the GestapTSO Corps. I believe that a whole new branch of the agency will be created, at obscene cost, with a huge hiring binge and construction of new training facilities - because the FAM, Secret Service, or FBI facilities will not be good enough - and the new corp will allow Pistole to expand the agency's personnel rolls and budget even further while finally giving him the armed, unrestricted force he seems to have always wanted TSA to become.