On December 22, 2001—just months after the 9/11 attacks—Richard Reid boarded American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami with homemade bombs hidden in his shoes.
During the flight, Reid tried to detonate his shoes, but he struggled to light the fuse. Crew members and passengers noticed and restrained him.
The plane diverted to Logan International Airport in Boston, and Massachusetts State Police officers took Reid into custody. Reid told FBI agents that he made the shoes himself.
This is the pair of shoes [Richard] Reid—also known as the “shoe bomber”—tried to detonate. FBI bomb techs determined that the shoes contained about 10 ounces of explosive material.
1 shoe bomb happens and literally everyone has to be checked for decades.
Hundreds of mass shootings happen and there’s just nothing we can do.
Police murder unarmed citizens and we rarely do anything to fix it.
Homelessness is growing and we can’t possibly find housing.
The answer to your unspoken question is money.
Decades of checking shoes is decades of money in the hands of the few.