It is amazing that, in light of recent events, the media is still not even trying to hide its total and utter revulsion towards handguns. Even in terms of the completely logical and commonsense idea of allowing airline pilots to carry handguns they still treat them like they’re swastikas. They can barely contain their contempt when having even to report on this suggestion.
Can someone, ANYONE, please tell me one single solitary legitimate downside to this idea? How is it in any way even the least bit debatable? How is any different than using Air Marshalls? Why are they even going to bother with extra psychological tests and background checks for the pilots? If an airline pilot went off his nut it would only take a flick of his wrist to nearly instantly kill himself and everyone else on board. It is an obvious given that we must trust these people with our lives.
In the US, Air Marshalls cannot ever be put on every single flight. But armed pilots could be. Right now. Within a week! Almost all commercial airline pilots served in the military. This would not be a big deal for them and it should not be a big deal for anyone else.
P.S. In terms of the physics of guns + planes:
A. This is easily solved via special ammunition.
B. Isn’t even that important. Contrary to what everyone seems to believe you could go hog wild with a .44 magnum inside a jetliner and you would not even come close to bringing it down. It just doesn’t work that way.
While I certainly agree that the media is heavily biased against private gun ownership and gun owners, I think the OP was a bit over the top. I have only read one article so far on the Pilot Union’s request to arm pilots, and it struck me as reasonably fair.
Pilots fly planes. It’s what they’re trained to do. Asking them to add “control any emergent hi-jacking situation” to their job description would require an enormous amount of new training and then firing all those pilots who cannot pass the training and would consequently be unable to deal with any emergency.
Fine. So we do that. Now you’re asking the pilots to risk their life to fight terrorists. So let’s say there’s a hi-jacking and the pilot and co-pilot put up a fight. Unfortunately, although they manage to kill the hijackers, the pilot has been killed and the co-pilot badly wounded.
Ok, plus the pilot is really busy flying the plane and thus ensure the safety of the passengers, which might mean that the terrorists could disarm him before he had time to react, so now the terrorists have the guns, anybody feel like rushing them with a rolled up copy of the inflight magazine?
No, not “control any emergent hi-jacking situation”. Just shoot hijackers attempting to enter the cockpit. How hard do you think that would be?
Cite? Specifically, on the “enormous” part.
Sounds reasonable to me, given that they are almost certainly dead (we must assume) if they don’t fight.
How exactly is this scenario worse than the alternative, in which the hijackers gain control of the plane from the unarmed cockpit crew, and proceed to fly it into the side of a building, killing thousands of people?
How likely do you think this is?
And, on top of everything else I have said here, and in response to both of these posters, it now appears that The Airline Pilots Association supports the idea, ie the people most in a position to know whether it is a good idea or not.
They’ll be a) facing the wrong direction and b) busy trying to fly a plane. The hijacker is preceded into the cockpit by his stewardess hostage, knife to her throat. All the pilot has to do is hit autopilot, grab his gun from its convenient but secure storage space, get out of his seat and shoot the hijacker. Clearly, a stroll in the park.
I was thinking the same training an Air Marshall would receive.
And assumptions are the mother of what? There are more than two options here. (see below)
Well, that’s one alternative. There are others, involving fully trained Air Marshalls who can devote the entirety of their attention to the problem of the hijackers. I think you might be confusing “This is a bad solution to the problem” with “Let’s do nothing at all”.
I’m not sure they are the people most qualified to know whether it’s a good idea or not. Really. Just because they’re trained to fly planes doesn’t mean that they’re experts on aviation security. The vast majority of them have never been in a hijacking. I’m sure they believe they’d be safer, and feel safer, with guns, but that doesn’t mean they’ve analysed the tactical problems and decided that, objectively, the pilots of the plane are the ones best suited to the role of attacking hijackers.
So yes, italics or no, I would argue with them. And I’m sure they’d care, too.
a) require all pilots to be armed
b) permit all pilots to be armed
I think it makes a BIG difference.
Also, re the poster saying letting off a .45 wildly on an airliner wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing (from a strictly staying up in the air kinda perspective) - I suspect that the same .45 being fired a number of times in the cockpit and hitting all those nice instruments, computers and things may be a little worse.
Finally (my 3c worth) - AFAIK flying an airliner once it is up and pointing the right way is not exactly taxing for the pilot. Furrfu - the buggers can even land by wire now - complete with flare and gentle touchdown (thanks for that footage, Discovery Wings channel).
NB I speak as a moderately rabit anti-gun ownership person, but thats for joe public. Like the man says, once your up in those babies your life is in the pilots hands anyway.
I would not want a pilot who’s never had any experience with a handgun to carry around a 9 millimeter semi-auto. At minimum, (s)he should have to take and pass a basic firearms safety course with the make and model of gun (s)he will be using.
yes, it does. i heard on the news last night that it will be up to the pilots to volunteer to have guns. but this is still just a proposal, it could change.
here’s another question to ponder: would this proposal make it absolutely unnecessary for hijackers to even bring weapons on to the flight? in the recent plane crashes there were five hijackers on each flight, with box cutters and primitive knives. take away the possibility of knives, but throw in the possibility of the pilot having a gun, and those five guys can easily take the gun from the pilot. even if he kills a couple of them first, it wouldn’t matter, because they are on a suicide mission. then they have a gun, and no one is going to mess with them (remember we are still thinking pre-WTC attack, so the passengers don’t know they are going to die). even with our newfound knowledge of hijacking motives, the deciding factor is still the number of hijackers relative to the number of passengers and if the pilot has a gun. this all seems like a bad idea to me.
the OP stated that there is special ammunition that would enable a gun to be safely fired inside a plane. cite, please?
also, going hog wild with a .44 magnum. again, cite, please? ditto the statement that almost all pilots in the US have served in the military.
may i also point out that there seems to me to be a big difference between flying a fighter jet, where you are trying to hit targets on the ground or in the air, and flying a commercial plane where you may be trying to shoot someone who is standing behind you?
that said, i am in favor of stun guns or tasers for all airline personnel, including flight attendants. also for reinforcing cockpit doors, and even locking the pilots in with a one-way lock that only they can open. and why not install a special button, on the floor near the pilots’ feet, that will cause the doorway to give off a huge shock, strong enough to incapacitate, to anyone trying to force their way in?
i want our pilots, and our passengers, protected. i’m just not sure that guns are the answer.
Pilots are pilots…not SWAT teams. Personally pilots being armed in and of itself doesn’t bother me but neither would I feel especially safer for it. Locking them behind a vault door would seem to do the trick nicely. Properly built (which shouldn’t be much trouble for engineers) there would be NO way ANYONE would get through that door without a blowtorch and I suspect a blowtorch would be difficult to get through security. Given that what is the point of pilots having guns? Are they supposed to come out and do battle with the terrorists? In case of a hijacking my take would be that it is the pilots’ job to get the plane on the ground (in a nice, controlled fashion) ASAP. There is no reason for the pilots to leave the cockpit and hence no reason for them to have guns. If the hijackers have a bomb then all bets are off anyway and a gun still won’t serve anybody well.
As Naughty Wicked Zoot (love that nickname…one of my favorite movies) I would think there are other solutions that work just as well as a firearm but cause less problems overall. A Taser might work nicely or a shock-rod or something like that. They are useful against a few people but not the end of the world should the terrorists somehow get their hands on them. As to how a terrorist would get their hands on the pilot’s weapon(s) consider a terrorist standing outside the cockpit threatening to slit a child’s throat and will continue doing so till the pilots emerge and hand over their weapons. Can you be certain that no pilot would comply with the terrorists demands? I’m not sue I could sit in the cockpit under those circumstances but at least if they did come out a non-lethal, non-hole making weapon would be less useful to the terrorist than a gun would.
I don’t know why it wouldn’t work but my idea is for the plane to carry tanks of knockout gas on board. Pilots put on their gas masks and flood the cabin with some reasonably fast acting gas and put everybody to sleep. This might not be a good solution if the hijacker has a bomb (since he could probably detonate it before he passed out) but it seems it would work for most other situations. It would of course be up to the pilot to decide whether or not to use it.
Let’s also note that several of the hijackers from this incident were pilots legitimately trained at U.S. flight schools. Clearly, just being the pilot doesn’t mean you’re not a security risk.
Though I’m personally a pro-gun-control-kinda guy (I have nothing against people having guns; just make sure they have licenses and periodic renewal tests), I see nothing wrong with arming pilots – if they want the guns. I say this only because one of the local news radios this morning was asking pilots about the idea, and some of them weren’t too thrilled about it. Not sure if it was because of the worry of puncturing the cabin while in flight or the added responsibility of fighting hijackers, but apparently not all pilots are eager to arm themselves.
That said, resuscitating the Sky Marshalls program sounds great to me, too. Either that, or require an armed security guard to be stationed in the cockpit; let them worry about the security and the dangers while the pilots concentrate on flying.
In this article, the Pilots Union addresses the ammunition concern, as well as testing, training, and background checks. Here is a similar article. I’m reluctant to agree with Weird Al after our discussion elsewhere regarding the arming of all passengers, but I believe the pilots union has thought this through very well and their case should be considered.
Okay, so now the pilots (for the sake of discussion) are locked into the cockpit. The terrorists decide to start killing passengers until the plane is landed where they direct. What now?