Flying the "Friendly" Skies with Obama Airlines

Disarming pilots makes the cockpit less safe.

After September 11, 2001 many safety procedures were put into place to keep airline passengers (and those on the ground) safe.  The Transportation Safety Administration, or TSA, is the most visible outward sign of these changes (as well as the long lines) but other, more subtle policies were put into place.

Airline security, baggage scanning, searches, and not allowing non-ticketed passengers into the terminals may or may not have made flying safer because these are what we call “collective systems” that require multiple layers of personnel, procedures, and policies to all work together in order to nab potential bad guys.

Collective systems are easily brought down were one link broken such as not searching people who fit a “profile” because it is distasteful to Liberals that someone might fit into a category (Israeli airline security does it all the time and how many hujackings have they had?) or perhaps a bag was secretly loaded onto a plane.  As is usually the case, relying on the individual usually works out for the best to “police” their own area.  And so it was with this mentality in mind that George W. Bush’s administration allowed airline pilots to carry handguns once they fulfilled all of the necessary pre-conditions.  Armed air marshals would be in the cabins and armed pilots in the cockpit.

That was then, this is now.

According to the Washington Times:

Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.

The Obama administration this past week diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program to hire more supervisory staff, who will engage in field inspections of pilots.

President Barack Obama is definitely not on the side of people who legally own firearms.  Obama’s attorney general has already stated on the record that he favors once again banning “assault weapons” (those rifles that look “evil” but function like any other semi-automatic weapon):

The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.

Why cancel a program that, although never tested, adds an additional layer of safety (and in my opinion greater security because it relies on the individual not some agency)?  Once again the answer is politics.  Being an anti-gun president means carrying out anti-gun policies even if those policies have not been shown to be disadvantageous:

Since Mr. Obama’s election, pilots have told us that the approval process for letting pilots carry guns on planes slowed significantly. Last week the problem went from bad to worse. Federal Flight Deck Officers – the pilots who have been approved to carry guns – indicate that the approval process has stalled out.

Arming pilots after Sept. 11 was nothing new. Until the early 1960s, American commercial passenger pilots on any flight carrying U.S. mail were required to carry handguns. Indeed, U.S. pilots were still allowed to carry guns until as recently as 1987. There are no records that any of these pilots (either military or commercial) ever causing any significant problems.

Bet he wishes he was armed.

This is one documented example of a legally armed pilot preventing a hijacking and loss of innocent life:

Five minutes prior to takeoff from Hopkins Airport in Cleveland, Ohio, a huge white male burst into the flight cabin of an American Airlines jetliner captained by William F. Bonnell. Weighing some 280 lbs., looking even larger in a leather jacket, the intruder wielded a revolver. “Fly to Mexico or be shot,” he commanded the pilot.

Bonnell’s hand dropped down beside his leg, discreetly, to his flight bag. And his hand closed on his revolver inside it.

“I shot him in the hip. He still had the gun. He sagged a bit. I let him have it again, a little higher,” the pilot said.

The second bullet had found the gunman’s chest. He fell, dropping the revolver. The hijacking was over. The date was July 6, 1954. The plane was a Douglas DC6 on a flight that had originated in New York City with stops in Cleveland, St. Louis, and Fort Worth en route to its final destination, Mexico City. The hijacker, Raymond A. Kuchenmeister, Jr., died an hour later at a local hospital.

Were this event to take place now should Obama get his way disarming pilots the result would likely be tragedy.

When will Democrats catch on that when citizens are disarmed the only winners are the criminals who don’t pay attention to gun free zones?

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