Originally Posted by
n4zhg
Why not? A citizen with a CWP is at least as well vetted as a police officer.
Not at all.
One gun on each of four planes would have resulted in no TSA crap, no PATRIOT crap, and civil rights still in place plus a bunch of dead or in custody Saudi terrorists.
A diffuse threat requires a diffuse response. TSA et al is exactly what Osama Yo Mama wanted for us.
Yes, having many armed people on an airliner would provide a deterrent to a hijacking, but that isn't how it would work in reality.
Based on close observation of a host of firearms practicioners, there are few folks I would trust in an airliner cabin to be successful. If you are going to allow anyone to carry a firearm on an aircraft, then you are counting on there always being a sufficient number of good guys armed onboard to handle the number of bad guys who now have the same access to going armed on an aircraft. In today's world, that is not the case. Given the travel habits and the total number of LEOs in the country, there will be few sworn officers of any kind on board an airliner at any given time. LEOs simply make up a small percentage of air travelers (and I am one of them as I am a federal LEO and fly armed).
I would submit that allowing all LEOs to always carry would hardly move the numbers. The general public would have to provide most of the deterrence.
However, when you look further at average passenger demographics, it would be far more likely that very few if any people would actually carry a firearm onboard a given flight. The current percentage of CCW holders versus the general population is very low. In other words, there are not many people in this country to provide an "armed passenger" corps if you will.
All this means that since we are depending upon a random deterrence by a small percentage of armed citizens, making it more likely that the bad guys would both outnumber, and out skill the typical CCW holder on any given flight.