If law permitted CCW on Airlines with a 8 hour training course would you do it?

If federal laws allowed CCW on aircraft with a class of instruction would you do it?

  • No - Guns and planes dont mix

    Votes: 57 26.4%

  • Maybe depending on the hassle involved

    Votes: 34 15.7%

  • Yes but certification would have to be frequent for max safety

    Votes: 31 14.4%

  • Yes but only if certification was good for at least 3-5 years

    Votes: 94 43.5%
  • Total voters
    216
  • Poll closed .
From a pilot's perspective, the negatives greatly outweigh the positives.

1) Since 9/11, unarmed passengers have done quite well at stopping breaches of the flight station.

2) Since 9/11, doors have been reinforced, and crews trained to not allow access to the flight station once the airplane is away from the gate. Hi-jackers aren't getting in without breaching charges.

3) Since 9/11, flight crews have a different mindset about the negative impact of letting a hijacker take control. They won't allow it.

4) Due to the nature of an airliner, way too many innocents are crammed into a very tight space; the odds of executing a clean shot (or, more likely, clean shots on multiple targets) in such a scenario are extremely poor. Odds of hitting an innocent, or damaging a control component or fuel line, or even hitting a flight crew member, will be higher than odds of hitting a legitimate target for the vast majority of CCW holders.

5) As pilot, I would not accept a flight that authorized random CCW types to carry on my plane. I'm pretty sure my friends in the industry, and this includes a lot of FFDO's, would feel the same.
 
The negatives for legalizing it would outweigh the positives.
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Life is a big positive, if you are alive because you were allowed to excercise your right to bear arms that would probably be a good thing in the minds of most people.

Are you to wait for a single Air Marshall and pray that your plane is one of the 5 or 10% that has one onboard? What if the Air Marshall is the terrorist?

I understand that arguement that passengers have stood up for and faught valiantly and sometimes even successfully to stop a hijacker, I also understand at times it didnt work out so well.

Do your rights end simply because you get on a plane? I understand the government has a concern for the passengers and for whatever the plane could be flown into but does that arise to the level to negate or in someway modify the 2A? At some point should not the honorable citizenry be able to be trusted by its government to act honorably?

A lot of tough questions and I dont pretend to have all the answers but in the end at some point we have to be able to trust at least some citizens to be able to act lawfully and if we cant then the problem with the planes is really small fry. Are we to go from a nation where you are innocent until proven guilty or become (continue to be) a nation where you are guilty and never capable of being proven innocent concerning if you can be trusted to be responsible...

Weighty questions indeed..
 
BGutzman, passengers stopping hijackers is a new dynamic. Prior to 9/11, the paradigm was that hijackers wanted to go someplace, make a statement, and/or demand a ransom. Common wisdom was to just ride it out, and let it be dealt with on the ground.

September 11 changed that.

Flight station doors will no longer be opened. Why is this a big deal? On Flight 93, the passengers fought back but lost - as the fight was going on in the flight station. Jam a body or two into a control yoke or the rudder pedals, (or even a body part, or for that matter a pencil) and you'd be amazed at how an airplane will come out of the sky.

If a knife is held to the throat of a flight attendant, these days, that door will still not open. The bad guys gaining access to the flight station is expected to kill everybody, now - so that access simply will not be given.

Without access to the flight station, terrorists need either cutting tools (in the sense of cutting through reinforced doors, not box cutters) and the time to employ them while the passengers and flight attendants are trying to stop them; explosives (blow the flight station door, or just blow up the plane), but those aren't easy to sneak aboard - and passengers are looking for it; or firearms (could handguns be used to get through the door - I doubt it, but suppose things are possible; they could definitely be used against critical aircraft structures).

Allowing people to bring firearms into the cabin with a certificate for proof of training actually would enable the bad guys. Unlike in your normal city or countryside, gun control can actually be made to work quite well in a vehicle that requires security checks for all who enter.

Note: at the time of 9/11, the box cutters the terrorists used were legal to have on board.

So, since 9/11, name one occasion where passengers have tried to stop a problem aboard the plane with bad results, BGutzman.
 
Well we have the 911 incident as you have mentioned that heroically failed and as I understand we have had disruptive passengers and the underwear and/or shoe bomber who were stopped.

Now we can argue symantics but Im not arguing symantics what I do argue is under the Bill of Rights and Constitution of our nation you are to be innocent until proven guilty, its not a government option it is the law.

I also argue that the government has an obligation to be able to show that it can trust the citizenry to be honorable citizens, I can think of governments in history that did (or do not) not trust the citizens and we dont want to be any of them.... (U.S.S.R, North Korea, Nazi Germany, Communist Eastern Europe) further given our rights as citizens we should not be treated in such a manner.... Its not politics it rights, and they are guarnteed in our founding documents.

Maybe what we should require is background checks on all passengers and maybe we should ban anyone and everyone whos ever been convicted of a crime of any kind from flying. (As obviously they have shown bad judgement in the past) We could also as a matter of policy shackle passengers until they deboard the plane at the destination. The point I am making is there must be balance in the governments approach, certainly we must seek to protect our nation but in doing so we must not become a police state..

IMHO the needs of a nation to protect its people is at the very heart of 2A and even with its liabilities is what the founders intended.

We have a nation the was created with rights as its founding principles and in some way we must find a way to honor those principals even at the airport. I certainly dont think our government is acting with ill will but history has shown how even the most honorable governments and people can make mistakes that world simply cannot forget...

We have no guarntees but our rights and one of those is to bear arms for our defense.... even if others dont like it...

Further it does not require that a terrorist is even able to enter the cabin of an aircraft; hydraulics and such could be overriden outside the cabin. Fortunately the enemies of our nation tend not to be that bright...
 
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Just arguing for something that increases risks terribly for an absolute view of rights is just not supportable. The BOR isn't a suicide pact.

I suppose one could argue that the right to keep and bear arms implies that a private citizen could own a nuclear bomb and take it on the plane also.

Why not grenades?

We've had folks argue here that the Constitution supports owning such. So toss one down the aisles at the hijacker.

Mleake nailed it.
 
I suppose one could argue that the right to keep and bear arms implies that a private citizen could own a nuclear bomb and take it on the plane also.

Why not grenades?

We've had folks argue here that the Constitution supports owning such. So toss one down the aisles at the hijacker.
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You have a good point and one that I appreciate but regardless of if arms are ever allowed on board as a CCW we do need to find a point where the government sets some standard as to what citizens can and should be trusted.

Even people with background checks can betray the public trust and John or Jane Q citizen has a right to be treated with a certain level of trust unless they have proven otherwise bad characters in the past.

Israel certainly has security concerns and they dont employ security in the same manner we do and yet they do a very good job of stopping the BGs. I do not know all the measures they do use but it would certainly be worth researching.

As far as firearms on planes in CCW mode, I know its not going to happen anytime soon. I do (and I believe you would agree) that people have the right to some sort of defense even on planes.
 
Wikipedia has a nice list of hijackings dating from 1950-2010.

Might be a good idea to review some of those listed that were done with guns.

I'd think there has been enough to warrant our current 'no cc' on plane gunlaws.

We can't just focus on the tactics/reasons used on 9-11, but rather the entire history of hijackings and what weapons were used in ALL of them.

Heck, I'd be happy if they let me take my pocketknife on the plane again.
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There were some done with knives too.
 
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