Your View is Illogical

From: "Angel Shamaya" <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 17:16:10 -0700
To: [email protected]
Subject: Your View is Illogical

TO: Arizona Daily Sun Editor
RE: "Better screening key to airline security"
http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=26560
-- 298 words --

October 3, 2001

In your "Our View" message on October 3, you said, 

"we're inclined to spend more time and money for on-the-ground prevention than for in-the-air anti-terrorist technology like steel cockpit doors and service revolvers for pilots and flight attendants."

Surely your think tank there is aware that lethal weapons are snuck into prisons -- where strip searches are the norm. Unless you support airports in implementing more effective strip searches than are employed in America's prisons, there is no logic in your proposal, whatsoever. Wishful thinking may "feel good," but feelings are irrelevant -- and dangerous -- where practicality and reality are violated.

If the pilots on September 11's four downed airliners had been armed with "service revolvers," we'd have a bunch of dead and wounded would-be hijackers -- and we'd not be mounting a war in the Middle East. Had those pilots been armed long ago, the scum who murdered 7,000 people last month -- in the span of two hours, using office supplies that can still be smuggled aboard any plane, any day -- would not have attempted their suicide mission, let alone succeeded.

CNN.com ran a poll recently, addressing the issue of arming pilots, and the public favored arming pilots to the tune of 61%. The Air Line Pilots Association agreed, as does every single pilot I know -- and that's many. Though I found your bigoted slur against National Guardsmen offensive -- "armed weekend warrior", please -- you are correct to say that a guy holding a gun on the ground won't stop another terrorist from getting a knife onto a plane.

I'll fly a commercial flight again when I know there is armed protection on board. Anybody can get a weapon on a plane. I did, two weeks ago -- and it was easy.

Angel Shamaya
Founder/Executive Director
KeepAndBearArms.com
1109 S. Plaza Way, #136
Flagstaff, Arizona 86001
(520) 522-8833

PS. Wake up to the issue of guns on airplanes. Start here:
http://www.KeepAndBearArms.com/AirRKBA

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