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EDITORIAL:
Guns on a plane
Obama secretly ends program that let
pilots carry guns
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
After
the September 11 attacks, commercial airline
pilots were allowed to carry guns if they
completed a federal-safety program. No longer
would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless
hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed
them into buildings.
Now
President Obama is quietly ending the federal
firearms program, risking public safety on
airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.
The
Obama administration this past week diverted
some $2 million from the pilot training program to
hire more supervisory staff, who will engage in
field inspections of pilots.
This
looks like completely unnecessary harassment of
the pilots. The 12,000 Federal Flight Deck
Officers, the pilots who have been approved to
carry guns, are reported to have the best behavior
of any federal law enforcement agency. There are
no cases where any of them has improperly
brandished or used a gun. There are just a few
cases where officers have improperly used their
IDs.
Fewer
than one percent of the officers have any
administrative actions brought against them and,
we are told, virtually all of those cases “are
trumped up.”
Take a
case against one flight officer who had visited
the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles within
the last few weeks. While there, the pilot noticed
that federal law enforcement officers can, with
the approval of a superior, obtain a license plate
that cannot be traced, a key safety feature for
law enforcement personnel. So the pilot asked if,
as a member of the federal program, he was
eligible. The DMV staffer checked and said “no.”
The next day administrative actions were brought
against the pilot for “misrepresenting himself.”
These are the kinds of cases that President
Obama wants to investigate.
Since
Mr. Obama's election, pilots have told us that the
approval process for letting pilots carry
guns on planes slowed significantly. Last
week the problem went from bad to worse. Federal
Flight Deck Officers - the pilots who have been
approved to carry guns - indicate that the
approval process has stalled out.
Pilots
cannot openly speak about the changing policies
for fear of retaliation from the Transportation
Security Administration. Pilots who act in any way
that causes a “loss of confidence” in the armed
pilot program risk criminal prosecution as well as
their removal from the program. Despite these
threats, pilots in the Federal Flight Deck
Officers program have raised real concerns in
multiple interviews.
Arming
pilots after Sept. 11 was nothing new. Until the
early 1960s, American commercial passenger pilots
on any flight carrying U.S. mail were required to
carry handguns. Indeed, U.S. pilots were still
allowed to carry guns until as recently as
1987. There are no records that any of these
pilots (either military or commercial) ever
causing any significant problems.
Screening
of airplane passengers is hardly perfect. While
armed marshals are helpful, the program covers
less than 3 percent of the flights out of
Washington D.C.'s three airports and even fewer
across the country. Sky marshals are costly and
quit more often than other law-enforcement
officers.
Armed
pilots are a cost-effective backup layer of
security. Terrorists can only enter the cockpit
through one narrow entrance, and armed pilots have
some time to prepare themselves as hijackers
penetrate the strengthened cockpit doors. With
pilots, we have people who are willing to take on
the burden of protecting the planes for free.
About 70 percent of the pilots at major American
carriers have military backgrounds.
Frankly,
as a matter of pure politics, we cannot understand
what the administration is thinking. Nearly 40
House Democrats are in districts were the NRA is
more popular than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We
can't find any independent poll in which the
public is demanding that pilots disarm. Why does
this move make sense?
Only
anti-gun extremists and terrorist recruits are
worried about armed pilots. So why is the
Obama administration catering to this tiny
lobby at the expense of public safety?
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Gun program for pilots set for
expansion, officials insist - Audrey
Hudson
Backers take exception to
inaccurate editorial Tuesday,
March 24, 2009
The
Obama administration has no plans to end a program
that trains commercial airline pilots to carry
guns and thwart terrorist attacks, and in fact is
seeking to expand resources for oversight and
training, government officials and pilots
organizations say.
"We're
looking for new resources and more money to bring
in for next year. The benefits of the program are
obvious. The pilots are an intrinsic part of our
whole aviation-security strategy and one of our
layers of security," said Robert Bray, director of
the Federal Air Marshal Service, which oversees
the program.
The
Federal Flight Deck Officers (FFDO) program was
created after the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks and has since trained 12,000 pilots on how
to carry weapons and defend their aircraft against
an attack. Among the planned expansions, Mr. Bray
said, is the construction of a new center in
Dallas, where armed pilots can receive recurring
training.
Mr.
Bray and the pilots groups disputed a March 17
editorial in The Washington Times entitled "Guns
on a plane: Obama secretly ends program that let
pilots carry guns," which suggested that recent
discussions about spending some of the program's
money for supervisory jobs amounted to killing the
program.
"That
is completely false," said Capt. John Prater,
president of the Air Line Pilots Association
(ALPA), the largest pilots union in the U.S. and
Canada, with 53,000 members.
After
the editorial appeared, Capt. Prater said, his
group called a meeting with Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) officials and were
reassured the new administration supports the
program.
"We're
not seeing anything other than cooperation, and
certainly the fact that as soon as this opinion
piece came out, ALPA and TSA met immediately, and
from what we've determined, there is no truth to
the fears that were put forth in that opinion
piece," Capt. Prater said.
ASSOCIATED
PRESS A Transportation Security Administration
instructor trains a pilot to disarm a potential
hijacker during a weapon-retention class at the
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, in
Brunswick, Ga.
The
Times' editorial pages recently were brought under
new management and operate separately from the
newsroom. Editorial writers produce content that
is not reported or overseen by newsroom employees.
"The
Editorial Department has been in transition these
last few weeks. We're aware of the error and are
investigating what happened so we can learn from
the mistake and not repeat it," Associate
Publisher Richard Amberg Jr. said.
Homeland
Security officials and pilots say that the program
has proven to be an important security layer and
that they are interested in making the program
more efficient.
"We
look forward to working with the Obama
administration to improve the management and
funding of the program to make it what Congress
originally intended it would be," said David
Mackett, president of the Airline Pilots Security
Alliance, an organization that lobbies Congress on
behalf of the program.
The
editorial cited information from pilots it did not
name, claiming that the approval process for
letting pilots carry guns on planes has "slowed
significantly" and that the "approval process has
stalled out."
Mr.
Mackett said the approval process did slow last
fall during the final days of the Bush
administration, but it was before the election and
possibly a result of dwindling funds at the end of
the 2008 fiscal year.
The
editorial also said the Obama administration
recently "diverted some $2 million from the
pilot-training program to hire more supervisory
staff, who will engage in field inspections of
pilots."
However,
pilots are supervised by the airlines, not
Homeland Security, and Mr. Bray added that no
funds were diverted; rather, he said, additional
money is being sought to manage gun-training
programs.
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