"J. Neil Schulman" <jneil@mediaone.net> wrote: <snip>
If you disarm the people -- if you make them give up their guns when they get on a plane, go into a post office, get taken out to the ball game -- then there will never be enough police officers to go around when the bad guys decide to strike, without warning, at a time and place of their own choosing.
The jetliners that took down the World Trade Center, a city of 50,000 daytime inhabitants, and that exploded into the very military headquarters of the world's only remaining superpower, were taken over by a few thugs with boxcutters.
If the airline pilots had guns this couldn't have happened.
If the flight attendants had guns this couldn't have happened.
If local police officers who fly were allowed to carry their guns with them, warned only to switch to frangible ammunition, this couldn't have happened.
But they are. On U.S. domestic flights they have merely to present themselves and acceptable credentials (which BTW the airline personnel are poorly trained to authenticate) and state in a form that they are traveling for LE purposes. There are other formalities that are followed, but overall they are not restricted from carrying. steve