Note from the Utah Crowd
=============

Don’t know what they’ve put in the water over at the Trib, but they
finally got one right with regard to firearms.

It is interesting to note that while the Bush administration’s
transportation head opposes arming pilots due to the belief that “pilots
should focus on flying the plane,” he is not opposed to letting them
carry non-lethal weapons. Now which is going to present a bigger
distraction for a longer period of time: Putting 6 or 7 bullets into the
head and torso of a hijacker who has just breached the cockpit door, or
holding a stun gun against the same hijacker’s rib cage waiting fo rhim
to go down, or even sparying the bad guy with pepper spray and waiting
for him to go and stay down?

Charles

http://www.sltrib.com/07182002/opinion/opinion.htm

Arm Pilots

As the last line of defense against hijackers, airline pilots who
have been trained and deputized by the federal government should be
allowed to carry firearms in the cockpit. The House of Representatives
passed such a bill last week, and the Senate should follow suit.
The Bush administration, through the Transportation Security
Administration, opposes the House bill. The TSA argues that heightened
screening of passengers, reinforced cockpit doors and plainclothes
federal air marshals on guard in airliner cabins are better and
presumably safer means to thwart hijackings. The TSA also argues that
pilots should not be distracted by security duties and should focus only
on flying the aircraft.
But the men and women who fly the planes overwhelmingly favor arming
pilots who volunteer to be trained for the task. They reason correctly
that hijackers with weapons could slip through security, and that despite
the presence of air marshals, pilots should be armed to defend the
cockpit of an aircraft in a last-ditch attempt to prevent hijackers from
taking control. Commercial airliners carry two pilots. While one flies
the plane, the other could try to stop an intruder.
Under the House bill, deputized pilots with firearms would not be
required or even allowed to use guns outside the cockpit itself. They
would not be allowed to leave the controls to use a firearm to deal with
a disturbance in the cabin. Their only role would be to defend the
cockpit.
It is legitimate to worry whether a hijacker could overpower a pilot
and take his firearm or whether gunfire could injure or kill a pilot or
passenger or could damage the aircraft. But those risks already exist
with armed air marshals. While it is true that pilots would not have the
depth of training or combat experience of a marshal, many pilots are
military veterans, and their use of firearms in the cockpit presumably
would only occur when the efforts of the marshal, if one were present,
and the rest of the crew to protect the cockpit had failed.
As a last line of defense, training and arming pilots is a
justifiable risk.