Anti-Gun Extremists Seek to End Federal Flight Deck Officers Program

Scarecrow Akhbar said:

Most people seeking to legally own a gun are aware of the nature of the tool they're buying and train themselves appropriately. No, I'm not overestimating anything. Real Americans on Flight 93 died re-taking that plane rather than allowing it to become a tool for the deaths of others, and they took action without firearms.

It's not the gun that makes a man a hero, it's his decision to do what has to be done with what he has available to do it. Guns in the hands of the good guys makes their success more likely in combat situations.

Click to expand...

They did that, because they found out what happened to the other 2 planes.

I do not intend to take any honor away from their actions.

Scarecrow Akhbar said:

Most people seeking to legally own a gun are aware of the nature of the tool they're buying and train themselves appropriately. No, I'm not overestimating anything. Real Americans on Flight 93 died re-taking that plane rather than allowing it to become a tool for the deaths of others, and they took action without firearms.

It's not the gun that makes a man a hero, it's his decision to do what has to be done with what he has available to do it. Guns in the hands of the good guys makes their success more likely in combat situations.

Click to expand...

+1. The latest tactical pistol class I took, the students numbered 2 current-serving LEO's, and 10 private citizens. I've been a cop, and am now a private citizen (with concealed carry permit), and frankly I have my doubts that Joe Average Cop is actually better trained than Joe Average Armed-Citizen. A CCW class doesn't teach much in the way of tactics, but plenty of CCW holders go on to take advanced training and practice regularly. I knew some fellow LEO's who never did any shooting except at the Academy and during annual re-qual.


The Flight 93 folks were indeed heros; it's a pity none of them were properly armed, the outcome might have been very different.

Scarecrow Akhbar said:

You just hate guns with an irrational loathing.

Click to expand...

Nope. I really don't care about guns that much. My main issues are economics, diplomacy, and civil rights. It's just fun to see you hicks get so worked up over such a trivial non-issue.

Scarecrow Akhbar said:

Most people seeking to legally own a gun are aware of the nature of the tool they're buying and train themselves appropriately. No, I'm not overestimating anything. Real Americans on Flight 93 died re-taking that plane rather than allowing it to become a tool for the deaths of others, and they took action without firearms.

It's not the gun that makes a man a hero, it's his decision to do what has to be done with what he has available to do it. Guns in the hands of the good guys makes their success more likely in combat situations.

Click to expand...

And when Gomer Pyle brings his gun on the plane legally and Abdullah is sitting next to him, suddenly Abdullah has access to a gun...even if Abdullah could never get one on the plane himself.

Kandahar said:

And when Gomer Pyle brings his gun on the plane legally and Abdullah is sitting next to him, suddenly Abdullah has access to a gun...even if Abdullah could never get one on the plane himself.

Click to expand...

thats why pilots and marshals who are trained and tested should be the only ones to carry.

Arent the pilot's gun locked up in the cockpit?

bilbus said:

thats why pilots and marshals who are trained and tested should be the only ones to carry.

Click to expand...

This conversation departed on a tangent when Scarecrow started arguing for the insanity of everyone on planes being armed to the teeth.

bilbus said:

Arent the pilot's gun locked up in the cockpit?

Click to expand...

Obviously hijackers can get into the cockpit with a little effort, or else hijacking wouldn't exist.

Kandahar said:

And when Gomer Pyle brings his gun on the plane legally and Abdullah is sitting next to him, suddenly Abdullah has access to a gun...even if Abdullah could never get one on the plane himself.

Click to expand...

There you go again, assuming gun owners are brainless and inept.

BTW, thanks for the "hicks" comment. Your demonstration of tolerance and civility is truly inspiring. Of course it is perfectly safe to use pejorative terms aimed at Southerners, Midwesterners or rural folks, whereas if you spoke thus about an ethnic group you'd be branded a bigot. Hm.

Let's see... "concealed weapon permit". That means the gun is hidden. So the first thing the Tango has to do is use his X-ray vision to find out who has a gun. Then all he has to do is just grab it, since taking guns away from people is so easy.

:rofl

Kandahar said:

This conversation departed on a tangent when Scarecrow started arguing for the insanity of everyone on planes being armed to the teeth.



Obviously hijackers can get into the cockpit with a little effort, or else hijacking wouldn't exist.

Click to expand...

I was refering to the guns being in a safe place when not needed.

Kandahar said:

This conversation departed on a tangent when Scarecrow started arguing for the insanity of everyone on planes being armed to the teeth.

Click to expand...

No, teeth aren't very effective weapons in homo sapiens. I'd rather see them armed with guns, which is a perfectly sane idea.

Kandahar said:

Obviously hijackers can get into the cockpit with a little effort, or else hijacking wouldn't exist.

Click to expand...

Ummmm....and the last time a hijacker just strolled into the cockpit of an airline in flight is...

....is a long time ago....and those cockpits weren't locked and the flight crew didn't have a gun on their side of the locked door.

Amazing how you can't seem to address those basic facts of the current real world the rest of us, but not you, live in.

I'm unsure...my objective is always to find a happy medium between prohibitionists who advocate a total gun ban and extremists who claim that the solution to gun violence is more guns.

Agnapostate said:

I'm unsure...my objective is always to find a happy medium between prohibitionists who advocate a total gun ban and extremists who claim that the solution to gun violence is more guns.

Click to expand...

Guns aren't violent. They're gadgets.

People are violent.

The solution to violent people with guns intent to do harm is people with guns willing to do harm to them to stop them.

It's the only way that works.

Unless you have a hand grenade.

I do not recommend using grenades on airplanes in flight. Unlike guns, they may pack enough power to cause explosive decompression.

Kandahar said:

This conversation departed on a tangent when Scarecrow started arguing for the insanity of everyone on planes being armed to the teeth.

Click to expand...

Well, lets look at this rationally. What are the arguments for forbidding law-abiding citizens with CCW/CWP (concealed weapon permits) from carrying on an airplane?

1. Depressurization/other functionality mishap.
This has been proven to be effectively mythical, at least from the cause of handgun bullets. If you're worried about it anyway, we can require low-penetration frangible rounds.

2. CCW gone crazy: the permit holder with the gun goes nuts. This is as much of a myth as depressurization due to handgun bullets. As mentioned before, crime statistics show that permit holders have such a low rate of violent crime it is virtually zero. In the unlikely chance that it did happen, an armed flight crew and maybe one or two other armed passengers would deal with it.

Ah, but then again, you said

Kandahar said:

I'm not worried about the average citizen with guns breaking into full postal rage.

Click to expand...

...so we won't worry about that one.

3. Terrorist/etc grabs CCW's gun. Well as I mentioned earlier, concealed carry means hidden. Properly concealed, you'll sit next to a CCW for hours and never realize he is armed in most cases. Without X-ray vision, determining who is armed, if anyone, is iffy.
Even if you did, taking a gun from an "educated CCW" is not at all like taking candy from a baby. Even if someone managed it, there would be the armed flight crew and perhaps other armed passengers to deal with. This is a non-issue.

4.. Crowded conditions
NOW, here is an intresting one. Yes, the conditions are crowded, and the risk to bystanders considerable.
However, let's consider the circumstances under which a rational armed citizen might use that weapon... terrorists, violent looney with a razor slashing people, hijackers...well, then again it is hard to tell the latter pair from the first one since 911. In short, it would be a desperate situation where everyone's lives were already in danger. Consider Flight 93.
The danger could be largely mitigated with good judgement and/or good marksmanship. I know plenty of CCW holders with both.

Now, come to think of it, crowded conditions applies to a lot of places, like malls, stores, restaurants. Do you oppose CCW in such places? Since we've narrowed the reasons to oppose CCW on a plane down to this one issue, the crowded conditions, let's address that issue as it relates to malls, stores, restaurants, buses, etc.



G.

Scarecrow Akhbar said:

Guns aren't violent. They're gadgets.

People are violent.

The solution to violent people with guns intent to do harm is people with guns willing to do harm to them to stop them.

It's the only way that works.

Click to expand...

That analysis is overly crude, in my opinion. For instance, we can refer to Duggan's More Guns, More Crime to refer to the costs that may be imposed by a mere increase in gun ownership without considering the reality of an unregulated secondary market. As noted by the abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between gun ownership and crime. Previous research has suffered from a lack of reliable data on gun ownership. I exploit a unique data set to reliably estimate annual rates of gun ownership at both the state and the county levels during the past two decades. My findings demonstrate that changes in gun ownership are significantly positively related to changes in the homicide rate, with this relationship driven almost entirely by an impact of gun ownership on murders in which a gun is used. The effect of gun ownership on all other crime categories is much less marked. Recent reductions in the fraction of households owning a gun can explain one‐third of the differential decline in gun homicides relative to nongun homicides since 1993.

Click to expand...

Agnapostate said:

That analysis is overly crude, in my opinion. For instance, we can refer to Duggan's More Guns, More Crime to refer to the costs that may be imposed by a mere increase in gun ownership without considering the reality of an unregulated secondary market. As noted by the abstract:

Click to expand...

The guy must be cooking the books. You can prove anything if you make up your own data. Every publication I've seen for a decade says gun ownership is UP, and violent crime is DOWN.

G.

Kandahar said:

Passengers aren't allowed to carry guns on the plane...why should the pilots be any different? They're trained to fly a plane, not kill hijackers.

I don't see why it would be a good idea for ANYONE on a plane to have access to a gun. If someone wanted to hijack a plane, it seems like it would be considerably easier to steal the pilot's gun than to get through security with one.

Click to expand...

typical irrational hoplophobic response.


If the pilot does not have a gun, we already know what happens.

Kandahar said:

Unlikely.



An exact repeat of the scenario is even less likely.


I have a question: Do you think random people should be allowed to carry weapons on the plane (provided they have the training and licenses and whatnot)? If not, what makes a pilot so special? Are pilots law enforcement officers now?

Click to expand...

yes. .........

Kandahar said:

And when Gomer Pyle brings his gun on the plane legally and Abdullah is sitting next to him, suddenly Abdullah has access to a gun...even if Abdullah could never get one on the plane himself.

Click to expand...

more hoplophobic rantings..... please. perhaps he can turn the gun into a nuclear bomb with a urinal cake too:shock::shock::shock::shock:

Kandahar said:

This conversation departed on a tangent when Scarecrow started arguing for the insanity of everyone on planes being armed to the teeth.



Obviously hijackers can get into the cockpit with a little effort, or else hijacking wouldn't exist.

Click to expand...

I guess you have missed the last 8 years when we fortified the cockpit. I thought you big city metro types flew all the time? :lol:

Goshin said:

There you go again, assuming gun owners are brainless and inept.

BTW, thanks for the "hicks" comment. Your demonstration of tolerance and civility is truly inspiring. Of course it is perfectly safe to use pejorative terms aimed at Southerners, Midwesterners or rural folks, whereas if you spoke thus about an ethnic group you'd be branded a bigot. Hm.

Let's see... "concealed weapon permit". That means the gun is hidden. So the first thing the Tango has to do is use his X-ray vision to find out who has a gun. Then all he has to do is just grab it, since taking guns away from people is so easy.

:rofl

Click to expand...

Note he is from "ohio", i find it funny to hear people from Ohio call others hicks. just sayin. :rofl

Goshin said:

The guy must be cooking the books. You can prove anything if you make up your own data. Every publication I've seen for a decade says gun ownership is UP, and violent crime is DOWN.

G.

Click to expand...

And that essentially constitutes nothing more than selective incorporation of raw data. So it would really be more accurate to claim that gun extremists on either side who selectively incorporate raw data are "cooking the books."

Kandahar said:

Passengers aren't allowed to carry guns on the plane...why should the pilots be any different? They're trained to fly a plane, not kill hijackers.

Click to expand...

Seems to me you answer your own question here.

If there's anyone that should possess the deadly force necessary to secure the flight deck, its the guys that know how to land the plane.

I don't see why it would be a good idea for ANYONE on a plane to have access to a gun.

Click to expand...

See above.
Also, I presume this means you also oppose armed air marshalls?

If someone wanted to hijack a plane, it seems like it would be considerably easier to steal the pilot's gun than to get through security with one.

Click to expand...

By the time you steal it, it will be empty...

Kandahar said:

I have a question: Do you think random people should be allowed to carry weapons on the plane (provided they have the training and licenses and whatnot)? If not, what makes a pilot so special? Are pilots law enforcement officers now?

Click to expand...

Pilots arent random people -- they're the ones trusted with the safety and security of the plane. They also know how to land the plane. Allowing the guys that know how to land the plane the means to secure the fligh deck with deadly force seems pretty natural to me.

Kandahar said:

Obviously hijackers can get into the cockpit with a little effort, or else hijacking wouldn't exist.

Click to expand...

That may have been the case pre-9/11. Not now.

Agnapostate said:

That analysis is overly crude, in my opinion. For instance, we can refer to Duggan's More Guns, More Crime to refer to the costs that may be imposed by a mere increase in gun ownership without considering the reality of an unregulated secondary market. As noted by the abstract:

Click to expand...

If more guns = more crime, why then, as the number of gus more than doubled since then, the current level of gun crime, in raw numbers, is comparable to that of the late 60s?

Well it can be very important to understand the changes that have happened since 9/11. First of all security door that makes it much more difficult to get into the **** pit. Second the attitude of the passenger and flight crew have changed. Before 9/11 the goal of a hijack was not to crash into a building, instead it was about to accomplish political or economical goals, and the passengers and flight crew had a change to survive.

If a plan is hijack today people will believe that they will die either by crashing into a building or by being shot down. Therefor will it be almost impossible for any terrorist to take over a plan, because people will fight back to the last breath and the terrorist will probably not even get to the reinforced security door.

So arming pilots will have little effect on security. It can only have a very small negative effect that if the plan is getting hijacked the pilots if armed may open the security door and try to deal with the situation and get overpowered and loose the gun and leave an open door to the cockpit. But this is for many reason very unlikely so in reallity is just a psychology measure to make people feel their are safe.