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Aug 30, 2003 While looking through my room the other day, I happened to come across something I had written for school last year about how the TSA was being extremely slow to put forward action to arm pilots of commercial airlines. I didn't remember hearing anything about it so I looked up what had happened, and it turns out that they put forward the action and got it done! Hopefully in five years they will have one third of all the pilots trained, but now they have trained the first class of armed airline pilots and there are now 46 pilots who are increasing security by having a firearm in the cockpit. That is 46 out of 90,000, approximately .05% of the pilots in the United States. Let me be the first to officially say, "Oh gee, I feel safer." I believe it was about September 13, 2001 when I was in eighth grade and discussing with the Head of School the terrorist attacks that had taken place two days prior. We were talking about the terror of hijacking. "Why don't they just give all the pilots guns?" I said to the Head of School, "That would be an easy and effective way to solve the problem." I had always been a very outspokenly pro-gun student, and so it was her immediate reaction to roll her eyes at me, however it turns out that I was not the only person who thought of the idea. Many people in this country support the idea of pilots being able to defend passengers in their planes, however officials of the TSA do not seem to be among them, as they do everything in their power to delay the process of arming the pilots. The TSA should be ashamed of the way they have handled the process of arming the pilots. The action (or lack thereof) which has been put forward has served mostly to discourage pilots from entering the training program, and to inconvenience those that do. The harsh and unnecessary demands will stop many perfectly capable pilots from being trained to hold a gun. The demands are also costly, putting more of a limit on the number of airplanes to become safe. The training program has just been moved, which encourages those teaching it to quit their jobs rather than uproot their families. This is disturbingly slow and drawn out, and the United States cannot afford to wait until after the next terrorist attack. It should be a simple matter to see to it that all pilots are trained to handle firearms safely, and there is no excuse for why they shouldn't all be perfectly capable of having a gun in the cockpit by now, nearly two years after September 11. While a one or two week long intensive training program would be more than sufficient to teach pilots how to handle firearms safely, the TSA is dragging it's feet through the mud and refusing to work quickly to avoid future hijackings. Their strict demands not only discourage pilots from taking the training program, they are pointless and nothing more than anti-security red tape. One of these demands is that each of the pilots be subject to two in depth psychological examinations. It is my personal opinion that if the pilots flying our airplanes 30,000 feet in the air really need psychological examinations, then we have bigger problems than terrorists. Giving a pilot a gun should not require any more psychological analysis than whatever they had to go through in the first place to gain control of a flying vehicle with hundreds of passengers. According to an article in the Washington Post early this year, the FAA already requires that the pilots have psychological evaluations every six months. I once saw a bumper sticker that said, "U.S. Government philosophy: If it aint broke, fix it 'till it is." The TSA and FAA's philosophy seems to be, "if the pilots aren't crazy, psycho-analyze them until they are." The TSA claims that all the evaluations are necessary and says that pilots "have to have the requisite mental, psychological and cognitive abilities as well as the discipline and judgment" to possess the firearms. Agreed. It is my hope that if a person is flying an airplane that I'm on, the TSA and FAA have already determined that they possess those qualities. That should be enough to arm them. It was proved on September 11th that a commercial airliner is a much more deadly weapon than a firearm could ever be. In a time when events around the world bring down confidence in safety, it is important for Americans to know that they are not at risk of hijackings when they board an airplane. The TSA needs to stop screwing around, drop the unnecessary delays of the gun project and get it done. To demand psychological evaluations, tests and mental analysis is an insult to the pilots who hold the lives of hundreds of passengers in their hands, and it should stop. These individuals already went through plenty to prove that they are capable of this responsibility, and they should have the right to bear arms on their planes to protect themselves and their passengers. It is time to use the Second Amendment as it was meant to be used: to defend citizens of the United States and to save lives. ------------ About the author: Natalie Amethyst is an opinionated high school sophmore who loves to write, travel and debate politics as well as ski, horseback ride and read. She hopes to become more involved in politics, as well as spend her life writing all over the world. Email Natalie Amethyst: natalie3_8@hotmail.com Comment on this column in the forum. Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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