100 ml of prussic acid is a heck of a lot deadlier than a knife.

Too many people think that the "terrorists" are teeming with members and are only capable of obtaining obvious weapons like knives.

We really need to reassess what constitutes a legitimate threat to aircraft and airpots, focus on those things, and let the rest of them go. A loony could go nuts with a knife at a mall. It's just one of those things no one needs to worry about unless they want to spend their lives worrying about all possible sources of harm.

They'd better confiscate laptops too. They're more dense than bricks can do lots of damage when smashed against someone's head. What about those innocent looking power cables? They can be used to strangle!!! USB cords can as well. We can't allow them on board, can we? All these acts can be perpetrated by humans! We never can be too safe. We'd better not let them on the plane either. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

This is inconsistent with your strident opinion regarding that firearms not be allowed on planes Spiff. How do you reconcile these disparate opinions?

BTW, this is a serious question (if you were wondering). I'm not being an ..., I'm curious as to why you believe no one (including LEOs) carry a gun on a plane but knives for everyone are okay.

Gosh that High G guitar string and two spools of thread I carry couldn't possibly have any other uses. Naw!!

Have you ever tried this? Breaking a bottle like that? Give it a go and get back to me. I bet you're in for quite a shock.

Not at all.

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.


Well, it has been successful quite a few times to date.

Just saying.......

Largely due to governmental restrictions on who can obtain a CCW. I'd go through the hoops, but I live in California.

Move to the South. Easy as pie.

A firearm is a legitimate weapon to take over or destroy an airplane. A knife is not.

Only because airline employees cooperated with knife wielders. No cooperation = no success.

But then I'd have to live in the South.

I love my country, but some things are asking too much.

Could I still vote for Obama?

The worst part of the south (HSV is, after all, in Alabama) is the weather. It's so... so hot. And, to make it worse, it's humid. I could handle a 100-degree day just fine, but the 98% humidity on top of it makes them very miserable. You're practically swimming to walk anywhere.

On the plus side, nearly every building you would ever hope to see (aside from the rudest, cheapest, crappiest personal houses) all have central heating and air. It rather shocked my wife, who was from Pittsburgh, that we all have AC.

She was rather shocked in general that the "real" Alabama wasn't the Alabama she saw in My Cousin Vinny.

"Dirt for sale." Tsk.

And yes, you could still vote for Obama. Pretty much every part of the state of Alabama except the urban centers of Birmingham and Montgomery votes red though, so with the exception of the counties those cities are in, almost the whole of the state's popular votes, and, therefore, the whole of the state's electoral votes, goes to the Republicans. I think it's pretty representative of the rest of the south, too. There's just not enough citizens in the urban centers to outweigh the votes of the rest of the state.

...I'm really, honestly, not trying to start any kind of political debate. I was just trying to give an expanded answer to that statement and question, and it seems I got carried away a little bit.

He speaks the truth. Usually, it'd go something like this:

Clerk: "And why are you applying for the carried-concealed permit?
Citizen: "Personal defense."
Clerk: "Okay."

...No, seriously, that's about how easy it is. There's a really good chance that just about anyone you see is going to be packing a pistol about them somewhere. Outside of the urban centers (which have municipal gun laws), this tends to make everyone act really nice and friendly toward everyone else

Not true sir. Use knife to stab your way into cockpit while the door is open, especially internationally (when it tends to be open a lot).

And then there's the human element. It's easy to say that you wouldn't open the door when your colleagues are dying/being murdered in front of you. The reality is something else.

Sure. But then there's that pesky Electoral College thing......