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Arm commercial-airline pilots
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Arm commercial-airline pilots
By CONRAD BURNS
Iwas disappointed when the undersecretary of transportation for security testified before the Senate Commerce Committee that pilots -- whom we entrust with multimillion-dollar machines and thousands of lives -- aren't to be trusted with sidearms. The undersecretary puts his faith in ''fortified doors,'' a seemingly nonexistent army of air marshals and -- if all else fails -- in-flight maneuvers to throw terrorists off guard. Instead, he should be thinking like the kamikaze terrorists that these pilots could face.
When I was in the Marines, I learned that to defeat the enemy, you must think like the enemy. For this reason, I believe that the Justice Department is better prepared to handle aviation security than Federal Aviation Administration bureaucrats. Do they really think that a door -- not a 9-millimeter gun -- is a deterrent to future Mohamed Attas?
If people want to die hijacking planes, it makes sense to this old cowboy that they die before they get the job done.
That's why I am co-authoring a bill to create a voluntary program to arm pilots and establish a training program for flight attendants. Deadly force is the only language of deterrence that a terrorist understands. Without it, we're vesting our faith in the chimera of air marshals and spotty airport security. A secure commercial flight relies on preventive layers of security being 100 percent effective, 100 percent of the time. We're foolish to expect that equation to work perfectly, forever, just as we're foolish to believe in an impregnable door.
Once airborne, flights are virtually defenseless. There are only 1,000 air marshals -- who at the very least work in pairs -- to service more than 30,000 flights a day in the United States. To build up a force sufficient to staff every flight, we'd need to create something nearly the size of the Marine Corps.
This is no time to be gun-shy about terrorism. We give our soldiers guns and send them to fight. We are prepared to give air marshals guns and put them in the flight cabin. But we will let pilots, almost two-thirds of whom have served in the military, fend for the plane and passengers with their bare hands?
American soldiers aren't asked to fight terrorists with toys and temerity. Let's give trained men and women the right to self-defense. Let's do that by using frangible ammunition, which disintegrates upon impact with a metal surface but is strong enough to take down a terrorist. That's how the terror will end, how the hijackings can end. Not with a whimper -- but a bang.
Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee and the aviation subcommittee.
c2002 The Los Angeles Times
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/3483740.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
By CONRAD BURNS
Iwas disappointed when the undersecretary of transportation for security testified before the Senate Commerce Committee that pilots -- whom we entrust with multimillion-dollar machines and thousands of lives -- aren't to be trusted with sidearms. The undersecretary puts his faith in ''fortified doors,'' a seemingly nonexistent army of air marshals and -- if all else fails -- in-flight maneuvers to throw terrorists off guard. Instead, he should be thinking like the kamikaze terrorists that these pilots could face.
When I was in the Marines, I learned that to defeat the enemy, you must think like the enemy. For this reason, I believe that the Justice Department is better prepared to handle aviation security than Federal Aviation Administration bureaucrats. Do they really think that a door -- not a 9-millimeter gun -- is a deterrent to future Mohamed Attas?
If people want to die hijacking planes, it makes sense to this old cowboy that they die before they get the job done.
That's why I am co-authoring a bill to create a voluntary program to arm pilots and establish a training program for flight attendants. Deadly force is the only language of deterrence that a terrorist understands. Without it, we're vesting our faith in the chimera of air marshals and spotty airport security. A secure commercial flight relies on preventive layers of security being 100 percent effective, 100 percent of the time. We're foolish to expect that equation to work perfectly, forever, just as we're foolish to believe in an impregnable door.
Once airborne, flights are virtually defenseless. There are only 1,000 air marshals -- who at the very least work in pairs -- to service more than 30,000 flights a day in the United States. To build up a force sufficient to staff every flight, we'd need to create something nearly the size of the Marine Corps.
This is no time to be gun-shy about terrorism. We give our soldiers guns and send them to fight. We are prepared to give air marshals guns and put them in the flight cabin. But we will let pilots, almost two-thirds of whom have served in the military, fend for the plane and passengers with their bare hands?
American soldiers aren't asked to fight terrorists with toys and temerity. Let's give trained men and women the right to self-defense. Let's do that by using frangible ammunition, which disintegrates upon impact with a metal surface but is strong enough to take down a terrorist. That's how the terror will end, how the hijackings can end. Not with a whimper -- but a bang.
Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee and the aviation subcommittee.
c2002 The Los Angeles Times
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/3483740.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878