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Jewish World Review Sept. 9, 2002 / 3 Tishrei, 5763

Doug Bandow

Doug Bandow
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Arm those pilots now

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | NEW YORK CITY Nearly a year has passed since the worst act of terrorism in America's history. The World Trade Center site is clear, the sky above is empty.

And fear of another deadly attack remains. A so-called miscommunication between pilot and air traffic controllers recently led the government to scramble two F-16s to escort a jet to Baltimore-Washington airport. America must prevent terrorists ever again from turning a civilian aircraft into a de facto cruise missile. Yet airline security remains a leaky sieve.

Security personnel routinely miss weapons and simulated explosives. Controls over who works for the airlines and provides airport services are weak.

It's time to arm pilots.

Many are former military personnel. And, explained Stephen Luckey of the Air Line Pilots Association to Congress: They "are willing and prepared to assume the responsibility for training and carrying a weapon."

Ellen Saracini, widow of one of the pilots killed on Sept. 11, said her husband favored arming pilots. Had they possessed guns on Sept. 11, she notes, "the loss of life and property damage could have been vastly different."

Yet the list of objections, shared by the Bush administration, remains long. There are fears of aerial shootouts -- ironically, from many people who favor using armed marshals to guard flights.

But as the JWR's Thomas Sowell points out: "The main reason for having guns for self-defense anywhere is deterrence." Arming pilots means no shot is ever likely to be fired. Anyway, planes can and have flown and landed after sustaining major structural damage.

Former Transportation Security Administration head John Magaw argued that marshals were the answer, since they "will do whatever they have to, to the point of giving up their own life, to make sure that that cockpit stays safe." Alas, there are only 1,000 sky marshals for 33,000 to 35,000 flights every day.

To patrol every flight would cost billions of dollars annually. And that's if the program was run well.

USA Today recently reported on scores of resignations, complaints about simultaneously over- and under-utilizing existing marshals, employing new marshals before completion of their background checks and abandonment of the precision marksmanship test. This a year after Sept. 11.

Some gun critics prefer Tasers, or stun guns. But wires break, the rechargeable batteries run down and Tasers may not penetrate thick clothing.

Jeff Zack, spokesman for the Association of Flight Attendants, opines: "We're against the pilots having guns until we know that they're going to come out of the cockpit, into the cabin, to defend us and the passengers." Otherwise "what we end up with is planes getting to their destinations with a bunch of dead people in back."

But at least the plane would get to its destination. Arming pilots does not make the flight attendants and passengers worse off.

To the contrary, it makes hijackings less likely to occur.

And it insures that suicidal terrorists won't be able to use the plane as a weapon.

First arm pilots. Then debate whether they should ever leave the cockpit with their weapons.

John Magaw also contended that pilots were to focus on their jobs, getting the plane "on the ground as quickly as you can, regardless of what's happening back there." But doing so might be tough if armed terrorists smash down the door, roust the pilots from their seats and murder them.

One of the strangest objections to allowing pilots to carry firearms is that liability standards would have to be adjusted. This is a criticism that could only be raised in a society where litigation runs wild.

But as bad as it would be for an airline (and the government) to face cases arising out of an errant shooting, imagine the litigation nightmare from another successful terrorist assault. Limit liability for good-faith defensive efforts.

Litigation concerns seem particularly frivolous compared to the federal government's threat to shoot down a hijacked airplane. This is a better option than arming pilots?

Transportation Security Administration head John Magaw is gone, fired by Treasury Secretary Norman Mineta. President George W. Bush should do the same to Secretary Mineta. And the Senate should overrule Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., and Commerce Committee Chairman Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., to bring legislation to arm pilots to a vote.

So long as there are hijackers willing to die attempting to kill Americans, someone on the plane must ensure that they die before gaining control. The best means to do so is to arm pilots.



JWR contributor Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Comment by clicking here.

Up


08/27/02: Modern-day gladiators
08/20/02: Don't start the second Gulf War
08/13/02: Declare war before going to war
08/06/02: Hostile allies
07/30/02: Protecting or persecuting citizens?
07/23/02: Shifting the risk to Uncle Sam
07/16/02: Fighting the patent wars
07/09/02: Getting that quota feeling
07/02/02: Teetering on the Democratic edge
06/25/02: Judicial litmus tests
06/18/02: Killer teeth?
06/11/02: Europeans defending whom?
05/24/02: Threatening pharmaceutical innovation
05/14/02: The war crimes fantasy
05/07/02: Paying a high price for befriending Saudi princes
04/30/02: The price of postal monopoly
04/23/02: The war on charity
04/16/02: The forgotten human right
03/27/02: Cuba's struggle to be free
03/20/02: How to defeat Cuban communism
03/12/02: Junk science, redux
03/06/02: Axis of hubris
02/27/02: Washington-style campaign reform: incumbent protection
02/20/02: The grand Enron morality play
02/12/02: Rebuilding what?
02/05/02: Succumbing to the terrorist temptation
01/29/02: Democrats for what?
01/22/02: The Iraqi question
01/14/02: Profiling frequent flyers
01/08/02: Trade, not aid
01/02/02: Treason by any other name
12/26/01: Preserving freedom in an unfree world
12/17/01: Dealing with terrorism's aftermath
12/10/01: Emerging friendships?
12/04/01: Uncle Sam: Insurer of last resort
11/28/01: Expanding the circle of trade
11/20/01: Free to be stupid
11/13/01: The meaning of compassion
11/07/01: Patriotic scoundrels
10/30/01: The coming postal raid
10/16/01: First, do no harm
10/12/01: Good news from a suffering land
10/04/01: Defending whom?
09/25/01: The wrong solution to the wrong problem
09/21/01: The price of terrorism
08/28/01: Uncle Sam's retirement scam
08/21/01: Canberra's quaint naivete
08/14/01: Uncle Sam's false fuel economy
08/08/01: The Clinton administration in drag
07/31/01: The high cost of government
07/24/01: Kill the campaign reform illusion
07/17/01: Do as I say, not as I do
07/11/01: Lawyers at play
07/05/01: Western blundering, Macedonian disaster
06/26/01: How best to honor Bill Clinton?
06/19/01: A maturing Europe?
06/15/01: Tell Beijing to mind its own business
06/06/01: Ukraine's boiling cauldron
05/31/01: Protecting privacy from Uncle Sam
05/22/01: America's Balkan quagmire
05/09/01: The Taiwanese flash point
05/01/01: Globalization serves the world's poor
04/24/01: Who's cheating whom?
04/10/01: The NCAA scam
04/03/01: Balkan stupidities
03/27/01: McCain doesn't want a 'risk for our country'
03/20/01: Dubious Korean alliances
03/06/01: Coercive patriotism
02/27/01: Bombing without end
02/20/01: A dose of misplaced outrage
02/13/01: Psst: Tax cuts for taxpayers. Pass-it-on
02/06/01: Bridging the unbridgeable gap
01/23/01: Left-wing demagoguery
01/16/01: The drug war problem
01/10/01: Politics and trade
01/03/01: Hope for liberty?
12/27/00: The debris of war
12/19/00: What's the rule of law for?
12/15/00: Ending silicone breast implant saga
12/05/00: Election may yield victor, but there are no winners
11/21/00: A Bush presidential mandate?
11/07/00: Exprienced Gore? Yeah, right
11/01/00: Interventionist follies
10/17/00: America's brightening prospects in Ukraine
10/11/00: GOP budget scandals
10/03/00: How a pharmaceutical 'crisis' was created
09/27/00: Clinton's empathy has helped nobody
09/13/00: AlGore's risky budget policies
09/05/00: Military readiness and Korean commitments
08/29/00: Let sleeping hypocrites lie
08/21/00: Targeting a journalistic pariah
08/15/00: European garrison for Kosovo?
08/08/00: Journalistic cleansing at the Boston Globe
08/04/00: Junk science on trial
06/22/00: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty
06/15/00: The end of U.N. peacekeeping
06/07/00: The Clinton regulatory miasma
06/01/00: Administration stupidity, congressional cowardice
05/25/00: The silence of the international community
05/18/00: Protecting the next generation

05/11/00: Freer trade with China will advance human rights

05/04/00: How not to save the Constitution

04/28/00: American tripwire in Korea long ago disappeared: Why are we still involved?

04/18/00: Clinton administration believes the IRS is too gentle, wants more auditors

© 2002, Copley News Service