Leadership Quote by Dave Reichert

“Unacceptable risk” is the kind of phrase that pretends to be purely technical while doing something unmistakably political: laundering fear into policy. Dave Reichert isn’t selling you a story about scissors; he’s selling you a standard for public life after 9/11, when the boundary between prudent prevention and symbolic control got deliberately blurred. By bundling “scissors, screwdrivers and the like” into a single ominous category, the line turns ordinary objects into proxies for catastrophe. The menace is portable; the list can always grow.

The intent is straightforward: justify tighter cabin restrictions and signal seriousness about security without having to litigate probabilities. “Pose an unacceptable risk” sidesteps the messy question of how much risk is acceptable, to whom, and compared to what. It’s an absolutist phrase that reads like common sense but functions like a veto. Once something is branded “unacceptable,” debate becomes morally suspect: you’re either for safety or you’re the person arguing on behalf of screwdrivers.

The subtext is aimed as much at institutions as at passengers. “Flight crews as well passengers” invokes a protective hierarchy, positioning the state as guardian of workers and families at once. It also tacitly answers criticism of security theater by moving the discussion from evidence to responsibility: if anything happens, who wants to be the official who said scissors were fine?

In context, Reichert’s law-and-order credibility matters. This isn’t a philosopher weighing liberty; it’s a politician translating post-crisis anxiety into an administrable rule, one that looks decisive precisely because it’s vague enough to enforce.