I know we had some lively debates about this when it was first proposed, and now (with search disabled) we have an incident. How many accidental discharges in the cockpit are tolerable, considering we as yet have zero incidents of an armed flight officer stopping a hijacker?
I’d say one or two are all right, but if the flight crews seem unable to safely handle weapons, they should be disarmed and rely upon the cockpit doors for protection. In a hijacking incident I don’t know that I would want the crew opening up to try to stop someone anyway.
Honestly, I’d like to know some more details about this particular incident first. In all likelihood it was an act of stupidity on the part of the pilot involved; anybody who’s familiar with guns knows that they just don’t “go off” accidentally. To discharge a firearm requires definite action (exposing the trigger, disengaging any active safeties, and pulling the trigger), and to perform that action without intending to requires a significant amount of negligence. That’s why most gun enthusiasts prefer the term “negligent discharge” to “accidental discharge.”
I see no problem with continuing to allow pilots to carry; no sense punishing thousands of responsible pilots for one pilot’s irresponsible action.
These kind of questions are really hard to answer, because the threat of a gun in the cockpit may have left many hijacking schemes on the drawing board.
I’m not saying that is indeed the case, just that it’s tough to do a cost/benefit analysis.
Given the fact that there are over 5000 planes in the air over the US at any given time, and that the program to allow flight personel to carry has been in place since shortly after 9/11/2001, I am not that worried.
One AD (which is being investigated, and this pilot’s carry certs will probably be pulled) in this timeframe is acceptable to me. If it had been an AD that killed someone, it still would be ok with me.
An AD that resulted in loss of an aircraft would require a review.
My (knowledable) coworkers and I were discussing this today. Somehow the media got the idea that guns can just “go off” without warning just by someone picking them up or maybe not even that much. That is too stupid to even comment on. You can take a pistol and drop it repeatably on a concrete floor and it will not go off. You can hold it, swing it around, and toss it to your coworkers and it will not go off. To fire a pistol, you have to hold it in the correct orientation, stick you finger inside the trigger guard, and pull with significant and deliberate force. It requires several pounds of finger pressure to fire most pistols. They don’t just go off.
Someone inside that cockpit was a full-blown fuck-up that decided to play with it not only irresponsibly but also in a creative way that ended up with a shot being fired. There is absolutely no excuse for that. It is about the highest degree of stupidity and negligence that there is. My father was a gun dealer and we usually had 40 - 50 guns in our house including machine guns from when I was tiny and many more available from our store. I have shot most common guns made and not a single one will fire during regular handling or even by dropping it on a hard surface. Most people that have these types of accidents claim that they didn’t know that the guns were loaded. I have no idea how someone could think that for a pistol ready for defense of the cockpit.
Wouldn’t some kind of low-power pistol substitute be more than adequate for the needs of a flight officer? Like a smaller version of the beanbag shotgun, dart tasers, etc? Or even just a pistol that’s dangerous to people, but doesn’t risk puncturing important airplane parts?
Because such substitutes would be necessarily less effective than a dozen hollowpoints in subduing a determined hijacker. When the potential consequences of failing to stop the threat is something like what we saw in 2001, or at least the possible loss of the craft and all aboard, a stray shot is a small risk. Besides, I’m pretty sure airliners are not so frail that a couple of handgun bullets could bring one down.
A minor nitpick; it is possible with most pistols to snag the trigger on some protruding object and have it discharge accidentially, albeit as the result of an unlikely set of circumstances. Many pistols have manual safeties and a few, like the Glock or the 1911, have a trigger or grip safety which further reduces the unlikely event of a non-finger triggered discharge, but the only pistol I would unequivocally state is incapable of being fired unless firmly gripped is the [url=http://www.hkp7.com/motion/p7motion.htm]HK P7
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, in which the entire cocking assembly is rotated out of alignment (and therefore the trigger cannot release the striker), rendering the firearm inert as a ingot of steel. However, all quality modern firearms have safety features that make them extremely resistant to firing from a sharp impact, and it is almost unheard of to find one in operational condition that could discharge accidentially without human intervention.
It is extremely rare, however, to find a negligent discharge that is not the result of violating Rule #3 (“Keep your finger off the trigger until the sights are on the target,”) and a fair number of NDs occur when someone is attempting to reholster the weapon and finger together, which is always a bad idea and doesn’t work with most holsters. When I was working as a firearms instructor one of the first things I would teach students is to find some feature–the slide release lever on most pistols, and the forward frame screw on most revolvers–that they could feel with their trigger finger and to confirm via tactile feedback that one’s finger is on it at all times that the gun is not in ready position and the sights are not aligned on target. I would agree in this case that the person in question certainly did not have the firearm properly secured for the situation and was in violation of rules #1, #2, and #3, and most likely #4 as well.
Airliners are not designed to take fire, even small arms fire, and while a pistol-caliber hole won’t tear the fuselage apart or suck people out through depressurization the way you see in James Bond films, the potential to damage some important bit of avionics or cut through a hydraulic or fuel line is not negligible. More worrisome, however, is the possibility of injuring a passenger or crew member. Far from a stray round posing a small risk, in the confined and seemingly always filled to capacity flight cabin the risk of hitting a bystander either from a through-and-through round or a complete miss is significant, especially if one is going to loose “a dozen hollowpoints.” And while it is unclear how much training flight crews are required to have in order to carry a firearm, I question that it is commensurate with training provided to counterterrorist personnel in law enforcement and military.
I suppose that one can counter by pointing out that an attack by these hypothetical terrorists will kill the entire passenger manifest, so in the words of Agent Johnson, “Figure we take out the terrorists. Lose twenty, twenty-five percent of the hostages,” is a reasonable rationale, but more reasonable yet is just to make the flight deck completely inaccessible to the passenger cabin via a secured door. In the case of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the flight deck appears to have been stormed so quickly that the flight crew was not even able to radio a warning, so it is doubtful that any weapon, whether a firearm or Taser would be of use, while a properly secured flight deck would have rendered the attackers impotent and easily overcome by the passengers. So, while I’m generally in favor of more liberalized policy toward the possession of firearms by responsible citizens, I don’t think they have any realistic use on board a commerical aircraft.
It’s part of a deliberate attempt to demonize guns. The media likes to talk about guns as if they weren’t tools that can be used for evil by the deliberate decisions of people, but are rather inherently evil and dangerous themselves. You rarely read “X shot Y”, but rather “The gun went off”.
Those guns are dangerous! They go out and kill cute toddlers all on their own with their armor piercing explosive baby-seeking bullets.
I see flight crews use USPs. At least they have good taste.
That said, yes, this is a pilot fuckup. USPs are the finest handguns in the world - they don’t just “go off”, someone pulled the trigger after disarming the safety (well, there are DAO USP trigger groups, but I don’t know if they’re without a manual safety).
That said, there was a fuckup in one of millions of flights, so it would be an overreaction to disarm pilots because of this. Of course arming them in the first place was an overreaction to one incident too. We, as a society, like to jump from one overreaction to the next…
I forgot to add that they probably use frangible ammo on airplanes that falls apart upon striking something solid - it’s unlikely to penetrate the fuselage. But even if they pierced the hull somehow, it would probably not result in the catastrophic loss of the aircraft.
I suspect it is far less a deliberate conspiracy to demonize firearms than blind pig ignorance on the part of journalists, who as a class are are essentially ignornant of anything requiring of specialized knowledge, be it of science, technology, history, statistics, et cetera. From that perspective, anything which makes a good headline–regardless of its veracity–is likely to be promoted, whether it is cop-killing buzz-saw Black Talon bullets, carcinogenic Alar-coated apples, or exploding GM pickup trucks.
While the original Sky Marshals were armed with .38 Spl loaded with frangible (Glaser) rounds, the current armament of the TSA Air Marshals are SIG P229s chambered in .357 Sig and loaded with standard hollowpoint rounds (most likely the Federal Hydra-Shok). Frangible rounds will most certainly penetrate the thin aluminum skin of commercial aircraft and will do extensive damage after fragmenting against the interior plastic lining and insulation, while a 9mm size hollowpoint will at most expand to about 0.50" diameter, leaving a small hole.
That’s not correct. Pilots need to be able to go to the bathroom. After 9/11 there were many “occurences” that appear to have been designed to test the response of crews during these breaks. Airline procedures have been developed to circumvent such attempts but they are not fullproof.
They need real guns to shoot real bullets. It’s not a long distant shooting contest. It’s a close order event.
It is very extensive. They train with the people you mention.
I don’t see how this answers my question in any way.
You guys really don’t think we have a weapon a bit less dangerous to the plane while still being appropriately anti-hijack? Not bean bags, rubber bullets, sticky foam, electric shock, chemical spray… Nothing?
Do you really think the terrorists are sneaking AKs or even pistols on board? No, they managed to get box cutters.
Stranger’s answer was closer to what I was wondering. I didn’t realize that frangible rounds posed an equal threat to important plane machinery.
For all of this, why wouldn’t a good old portcullis work? Seemed to function pretty well back in the day. Heck, these days we could even electrify it
That’s irrelevant, since this generation is never going to be operating under the assumption that prevailed at that time (“hijacker” = “clown who wants free ride to Cuba and some publicity”).
As I said in the OP, I think a secured cockpit door is the best defense. You have to consider that police officers receive exponentially more training than these guys, and still, a common cause of officer deaths is being shot with their own sidearm. I think putting weapons in the hands of the crew just gives a better trained and desperate hijacker a source of weapons. If they keep the door closed, the weapons do them no good, and if they open up to use them it’s putting guns in the hijackers hands.
I fly more than 35 round trips per year, and think my safety would be enhanced by giving the crews more rest and fewer firearms.
