By Reid Collins on 5.22.02 @ 12:32AM
Don't confuse Transportation Undersecretary John Magaw with Quick Draw McGraw.
Amid the welter of warnings -- they'll soon have nukes, suicide
martyrs are a-comin', apartment dwellers have most to fear, there's
no doubt they'll try again -- warnings that put everybody including
Grandma under suspicion, we now have this: airline pilots are not
to be trusted with pistols!
John Magaw, undersecretary for transportation security, made the
announcement at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing. "Pilots need
to concentrate on flying the plane," declared Magaw, ignoring
entirely the events in the skies of September 11, when terrorists
with box cutters commandeered four commercial airplanes by first
quelling the helpless flight attendants and then making their way
into the cockpits where the pilots were sitting ducks.
Pilots have requested that they be allowed to arm themselves,
observing that a large percentage of their number are militarily
trained and would expect to undergo more training if allowed to be
armed. Flight attendants have asked that they be equipped with stun
guns or some similar nonlethal weapons. From Magaw's announcement,
they too will be told to stick to the plastic serving ware. Under
Magaw-Mineta, only federal sky marshals, their number unknown, will
be legally armed. Magaw, who served six years as head of ATF, the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, during Waco, Ruby Ridge,
and the Oklahoma City bombing, and who headed the Secret Service
before that, may have acquired a natural antipathy for armed
civilians.
Magaw was speaking for Transportation Secretary Mineta and thus
for President Bush when he said, "The cockpit in the aircraft is
for the pilots to maintain positive control of that aircraft."
Positive control means, to Magaw, "to get it on the ground as
quickly as you can regardless of what's happening back there (in
the passenger cabin)."
What happened back there was what made the September 11 plan so
terrifyingly successful. Men with box cutters were herding the
passengers and flight attendants around, preparatory for the final
bloody assault on the cockpit and the ultimate takeover of the
aircraft.
Committee Chairman Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), has his own
non-solution for the order of events. As long as pilots keep the
cockpit doors locked while in flight, he triumphed, all will be
well. "You can put the rule in right now and cut out all the
argument about pistols and stun guns," declared the Palmetto State
solon.
Even Magaw saw the flaw: what are the pilots to do if they know
the crew behind them, and some passengers as well, are having their
throats cut, when the demand comes to open that door? Magaw's
solution: pilots could use in-flight maneuvers to keep the
hijackers off guard (and presumably off balance), and he even
suggested installing cameras back in the passenger cabin so the
pilots could see the results of these unspecified inflight
maneuvers! Ever try an Immelman in a 767, John?
There is no question that armed pilots could have staved off
most if not all of the carnage of September 11. As posited in an
earlier TAP article, "What
Would Have Worked," there is no question a legally armed
citizenry could have done the same. But to deprive the captain of
the ship, responsible for the lives and safety of the hundreds in
those seats behind him, of the Second Amendment means of saving the
ship, is a decision that must and will be appealed.
As for the President, for whom these cabinet members work, it is
no longer a question of what did he know? It is now a question of
when will he learn?
topics:
Transportation, Law
