Because it’s absurd.
I’ll concede complete ignorance about how difficult it is to chamber/unchamber a round; I had no idea you had to dismantle and reassemble the whole frikking weapon to pull it off. But, is it really that hard to operate the safety? The movies just make it look like like a flip of a lever. (I know I know, one should never trust movies as an accurate source of information.)
Plus, not to imply that flying a plane is easy, but there are two pilots. Is there something inherently irrational about this scenario?:
- Pilot A mentions he’d like to leave the cabin.
- Pilot B gets out the gun, using whatever arcane procedure is necessary to pull that off. During this long and intricate procedure, which possibly involves trolls, pilot A flies the plane.
- Pilot A leaves the cabin.
- Pilot A uses the john.
- Pilot A returns the cabin.
- Pilot B puts the gun away, again using whichever arcane procedures are necessay. Again, pilot A flies, unless he’s too busy lobotomizing that lawn troll.
I suppose this doesn’t allow for cases where Pilot A has explosive diherria and has to “Go go go go go!” with no warning whatsoever, lunging out of the cockpit without even telling his copilot to take the stick - but then, no ‘procedure’ allows for that. Though I suppose we could have the copilot sit there spinning the loaded, chambered, unsafetied gun around his finger for the entire flight; that’d cover it. :rolleyes:
There’s certainly something absured here, but I’m not entirely certain it’s me.
I know I’m going to regret this, but why is it a bad idea to keep a gun which will be unused 99.999% of the time with a loaded clip but no round chambered? I’ve used handguns safely for 22 years and I always transport them and carry them with no round in the chamber, unless I have a reason to believe there is possible imminent danger. The action of working the slide to chamber a round is automatic and takes less than a second. You draw, chamber, and you’re ready. I’m not talking about loading/unloading, only working the slide once - something any competent handgun user should be able to do safely on instinct. Or else I guess they shouldn’t be carrying a handgun.
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Don’t take this as a criticism of your factual position, but as an aside when did this notion of not having a positive safety come into vogue? The Smith & Wesson salesman (when me and Fierra were shopping for CCW handguns) made it sound as if it was more dangerous to have a positive safety on a gun (meaning, like on a Beretta PX4), claiming that the beavertail-type safety was much safer. I don’t see how. Their system - you grab the gun and pull the trigger and by God, it will always fire - how is that safer than a system where you grab the gun and pull the trigger and it doesn’t fire unless you positively move a safety? 
Missed the edit window - basically, I’m advocating Condition 3 for the pilots, over Conditions 1 and 2.
There’s nothing wrong about storing or carrying a weapon in Condition 3 (chamber empty), and it is true that retracting the slide takes only a second. But in the scenario of a hijacker rushing the flight deck and entering the cabin without warning during the few score of seconds that the door is unlocked and open while in flight, it is unlikely that a pilot will have time to chamber a round before being attacked. Plus, the manual chambering of a round is the time in which you are most likely to have a feed jam. The only time I’ve ever seen a Sig Sauer or HK USP pistol feed jam was due to insufficiently forceful slide retraction. If I thought it were really necessary to arm pilots, it also seems necessary to keep the weapon in as ready a state as possible.
begbert2, however, recommends chambering and unchambering a round for any trip to the bathroom, an operation that increases the probability of having an ND. There is really no reason for this whatsoever. Indeed, any handling of the weapon, other than the minimum necessary to move it from a transportation case into ready access in the cockpit, is inadvisable for the previously mentioned reasons.
I think this is more of an opinion issue that started to come in vogue when double action/single action (DA/SA) pistols (Beretta 92F, CZ-75, S&W Second Generation, SIG) which are intended to be carried hammer down started to become more popular than single action pistols (like the 1911 and Browning Hi-Power) that were intended to be carried locked & cocked. In the minds of some people, a heavy double action trigger adds additional measure of safety over a cocked-but-safed single action pistol. This was probably reinforced in part because traditional law enforcement revolvers have all been double action without a manual safety, and in part by newer double action only (DAO) guns without external safeties or pistols like the Glock where the external safety release in integrated into the trigger. The thinking is that you don’t have to worry about releasing a safety under stress, and you don’t have to remember to reapply it before holstering. (Some DA/SA guns, like the 92F, integrate a safety and decocker into the same lever, and others, like the CZ-75, offer a traditional Condition 1 safety as well as double action first shot mode).
However, as trained shooters are taught, when carrying in Condition 1 you make removing and applying the safety integral parts of the motion of drawing and reholstering the weapon. It’s like learning to drive a manual shift; you don’t forget, or for the most part even consciously think about feathering the clutch. And as any shooter should know, you don’t rely on a manual safety or a heavy trigger pull to prevent accidents; it exists merely as a mechanical backup to proper safe firearm handling technique. So I consider the manual safety or lack thereof to be a personal preference that is irrelevant as long as the shooter can reliably and safely operate the pistol. (Extra heavy trigger pulls, however, are in my opinion a serious deficit to accurate and precise shooting, and indeed, may institute unsafe behavior by encouraging shooters not to worry about rule #2.)
And it is a minor, pedantic, mostly semantic nitpick, but all modern service firearms use a magazine for loading and storing ammunition, not a clip.
Stranger
And I’ve been carrying for almost 26 years, on & off duty, almost 24/7 WITH a round it the chamber. I’ve carried Glocks, Smiths, Rugers, and Sigs. Never had an A.D…
A pistol without a round in the chamber is all but useless, especially if you’re fighting with someone. Someone attacking you happens lightning fast, and you may not have both hands available to jack a round in.
Those pilots are trained properly to have a round in the chamber, just like police officers do. I absolutely hate to comment on it while I don’t know all the facts, but I’m willing to bet that guy violated some part of his training that day. Pistols do not just “go off”.
All this talk about the pilot going to the bathroom… Why don’t pilots just have their own lavatory? Or, even better, design the planes with a lavatory near the cockpit for 1st class passengers, but block that bugger off with another door whenever the cockpit needs to be opened.
That way the cockpit is redundantly protected even during potty-break time.
Only a little more detail from the aviation media::
The pilot’s been put on leave. Big surprise, huh? And what the hell’s this about nobody else hearing the shot?
He’s also a Federal Flight Deck Officer, trained on his own time and money to carry a firearm in the cockpit. This article by an airline captain who’s also am excellent magazine columnist provides some illustration of the program. Follow-up.
Currently, airliners aren’t designed with a lav exclusively for the flight deck, and it would be extremely costly (and on many airliners, impossible) to modify them for this. Most large airliners do have a lav up front; however, it is generally right next to the forward emergency exit(s). Flight safety regulations and common sense dictate not blocking off exits.
But this is, again, essentially academic. In the last six years, there have been exactly zero incidents of organized hijackers trying to storm the flight deck of a domestic or international flight in the United States. While I regard most security efforts as being only slightly more than security theater, the higher degree of scrutiny and restrictions on what can be carried on board aircraft further restrict the probability of a successful attack. Current procedures–a secure, locking door to the flight deck, placing the beverage cart in the way when a pilot leaves the flight deck, et cetera–are reasonable and adequate while not placing a ludicrous burden on airlines to modify planes. And the originating attacks were the result of a gaping hole in security and awareness that has been mostly addressed. If “the terrorists” wish to attack again, it is unlikely that they’ll use the same method, instead preferring to attack any of a wide range of public venues on which security has not been measurably enhanced.
Stranger
I agree wholeheartedly that handling of the weapon should be minimized.
I’m used to a safety that is a de-cocker (like on the 92F) and I have to say anything else feels unsafe and wrong to me, and I won’t buy or carry it. A manual safety is no guarantee of safety (very little is a guarantee), but IMO it’s a lot better than the other system. That’s a debate worthy of its own thread, however.
Pilot’s don’t have their own lavatory because it would be a huge waste of space and weight. I thought about the 2nd door myself but I don’t see it without a complete retro of a/c design. Certainly possible with a plane that is still in the planning stage.
Minor hijack (pun?) - are you saying that the 92F has the decocker/safety on the same motion, so that putting the weapon on safe decocks it? I have a Taurus PT-92 which is a licensed copy of the 92, but it has some modifications - the safety is slide mounted and pushing the lever down past fire decocks it, and putting it up makes it safe. You can carry it condition 1. Is that different from the standard 92?
There’s nothing inherently unsafe about carrying a firearm with a round in the chamber. I don’t buy the “people who have had NDs and people who haven’t… yet” line. While it’s good to scare people into being extra careful, I’m sure there are plenty of people who have carried for a long time who have never had an ND.
If you treat the firearm with the respect it deserves and really bash the rules of safe handling in your head, it’s very difficult to have an ND. I can’t imagine myself ever having an ND because I’m acutely aware if I’m even coming close to violating any of the 4 rules, let alone all 4 of them. It takes some pretty steep lack of judgement to cause an ND.
Guns generally are very precise, very rugged, very reliable machines. They tend not to act abnormally in a dangerous way. 99.9%+ gun accidents are strictly the fault of the user. There’s practically no danger of spontaneous firing from having a round chambered.
It allows you to act more quickly, and more importantly, allows you to use the gun with one hand - you may find yourself in a situation where you’re using the other hand to hold someone off or for some other reason.
The Taurus PT-92/99/100/101, while similar in mechanical action to the Beretta 92/96, use a very different safety system. In the Taurus, the safety/decocker is frame mounted and each function operates in a different direction of the lever, similar to the HK USP in Variant 1 & 2 (though the Taurus is ambidexterous), allowing, as you note, Condition 1 carry. The Beretta 92-series, on the other hand, has a slide mounted combination safety/decocker; actuating the decocker also puts the gun in safe mode. This is similar to the Ruger P89 (standard model) or Walther P-38, and does not permit Condition 1 (cocked with safety) carry. (The Beretta also comes in a DAO configuration with a heavier trigger pull weight and no safety lever, but we don’t like to talk about that.)
I agree that there is nothing inherently unsafe about carrying a round in the chamber (of a modern firearm with a firing pin block that is in good condition), and there are plenty of shooters who have never had an ND; however, the possibility of having a negligent discharge, even for an experience shooter, is not to be lightly dismissed. Far from meaning to “scare”, the recognition that handling a firearm carries an inherent risk is a very rational point of view. You don’t, for instance, drive a car without recognizing that a single moment of inattention can result in an accident, whether it is technically the driver’s fault or not. Similarly, in handling a firearm it is only responsible to recognize that human fallibility can result in unintended discharge; hence (again) why there are four separate rules to firearm safety. Breaking one or two, while irresponsible, shouldn’t result in harm, but bypassing all four–which is surprisingly easy to do under stress or distraction–is a perilous situation. If you “can’t imagine [yourself] ever having an ND,” that itself should be a caution toward complacency.
I’m not saying that every shooter will have an unintended discharge–and indeed, we hope that this will not be the case for anyone–but any time you pick up a firearm that is in battery (regardless of whether it appears to be loaded or not) the possibility of discharge due to inattention or accident exists, and the only thing preventing it isn’t the mechanical safeties but the focus and discipline of the person handling the gun. (Firearms sitting in a holster or on a table, on the other hand, discharge all on their lonesome about as often as President Bush muses over the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.) Denying that this is a risk, just because one is “really good” at following rules is its own form of complacency. In any case, needless handling of a firearm in a confined or active space like a cockpit increases the likelihood of both a discharge and damage therefrom. If I recall correctly, David Simmons had a few anecdotes in this specific regard from his days in the USAAC.
Stranger
From HERE:
The pilot of a US Airways plane may have been mishandling a firearm when it went off in flight, piercing the cockpit wall before the jet landed safely, a federal air marshal said Tuesday.
All people eligible to carry guns in the cockpit carry the same weapon, the .40-caliber semiautomatic H&K USP.
“This is an extremely safe and reliable weapon,” said Greg Alter of the Federal Air Marshal Service. “It’s not going to discharge on its own, is the bottom line.”***
It’s starting to sound like I was right: this pilot was fucking around. Doing what he wasn’t supposed to. Violating his training.
Theres no need for any of these suggestions here (empty chambers and such). Millions of people carry loaded (with round in chamber) pistols every day: cops, armed guards, people with CCW permits, etc., without having an accidental discharge. Following the way one is trained to handle/carry the weapon will not result in one.
If it is confirmed that this guy was screwing around with his handgun, I say he should be fired and prosecuted!
Oh, I do have question, though. Perhaps I missed the answer somewhere:
These pilots that do carry, are they allowed to CCW or are they carrying openly?
Photos that have just become available show the hole in the fuselage behind the seat, as if the guy had the weapon in his flight bag (commonly stowed there). That suggests it went off while he was rummaging around in the bag for something.
I’d still be surprised that someone who went to all the trouble of getting the certification, at his own expense, would do something that overtly stupid, but you can never be sure about anyone, really.
BTW, I don’t really want a de-cocker, thank you.
According to THIS
I was right, the pilot was fucking around with his weapon.
However, he wasn’t violating his training as he was actually trained to fuck around with it the way he was!!! :eek:
Good grief. Leave it to the feds to have such bullshit regulations:
Rather than carry the weapon on their person at all times, pilots must lock it up before opening the cockpit door, meaning pilots handle the gun as many as 10 times per flight.
Why? That’s just stupid and it asks for trouble. Strap the thing on and leave it on until your shift is done! Theres no reason for those pilots to be taking those weapons off so many times. that’s freaking ridiculous.
carry weapons must use a holster used primarily as a home child-safety lock. A padlock is inserted through the holster and trigger guard, but, if inserted backward, it can trigger the gun, pilots say.***
Now that one has me. Of the zillions of handgun holsters I owned/have owned, I’ve never had one where the lock went through the holster itself. Can somebody please post a picture of this type of holster? I’d like to see what it looks like!
I am retracting what I said about this pilot. The TSA regs are stupid, and with even the best trained people who are 100% careful those stupid regs were just begging for something like this to happen! Load the weapon (including chamber), top off the magazine, strap on the holster, and leave it on during the entire shift and this won’t happen again.
Really, really stupid!
The only problem I see with this is if whoever has a gun needs to take a leak. Presumably you want the gun staying in the cockpit.
No, you don’t. That’s the stupidity of the regulation. If they’re going to be armed they should have that weapon on them, secured in the holster, at all times. There is no sense to this regulation.
Why? That just moves the gun closer to the potantial terrorists, into an area which they are at times also allowed into. You might be confident that nobody could possibly get the drop on the pissing pilot and take his weapon, but I’m not; I’d rather have the gun stay in the cockpit, which is presumably terrorist-free at all times.
Of course, I’d also want the remaining pilot focussing his attention on the door whenever his buddy is trying to enter or exit the cockpit - but I sort of also want him flying the plane at the time. How that would work I haven’t figured out yet.