[QUOTE=Shagnasty]
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.
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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=How Does the P7 Work?]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.
[QUOTE=Stealth Potato]
[QUOTE=Crocodiles And Boulevards]
I’m curious as to why they need real guns?
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?
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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.
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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.
Stranger
