We Do What We're Told

September Eleventh was an incredible tragedy in our nation's history. We sat, galvanized, to our televisions, while the media kept broadcasting the crashes over, and over, and over again, and then when the buildings collapsed, it broadcast THEM again, and again, and again.

Afterwards, there was a lot of finger-pointing, and in turn, a lot of "it wasn't my fault's". When you have a disaster of that proportion, nobody wants to take the blame, least of all the actual people responsible. Let us sit down for a moment and look at that awful chain of responsibility no one wants to admit exists:

At the top of that chain are the dead terrorists. They are ultimately responsible for September Eleventh. And they died. Next in that chain of responsibility are the passengers in the planes with them. This is a hard one to reconcile in this day and age of the professional shifting of personal responsibility away from the fragile ego, but the cold, hard truth is that the passengers were a powerful, sleeping force that only manifested itself on one of the aircraft; The other two aircraft's passengers ability to determine their destiny were left dangerously dormant, and they died for it, and in the process killed thousands of others. The next in that chain of responsibility are the aircraft crew, ostensibly for not motivating that force into action.

For doing what they were told. Where do you think the aircraft crew got their training to deal with hijackings and terrorists?

From the Airline "Security Experts" who paraded statistics and gave good advice for allowing terrorists to have their own way on aircraft. Those "Security Experts" and the airlines who sponsored them, paid their salaries, gave their statements their weight of almost-law in the realm of the airline, are next in the chain of responsibility. These "experts" were dead wrong.

Next in the chain of responsibility lies the Pilot's Association, who, way back in the late 1960's, complained vocally and passionately for some kind of "protection" from hijackings. The airlines' response? Metal detectors. The erosion of peoples' rights to defend themselves. The banning of firearms from passenger aircraft. The process of the airlines' whim becoming FAA-enforced law, ensuring that the passengers on board the aircraft of September Eleventh were totally, irrevocably, and inexcusably unable to deal with a couple of suicidally murderous jackasses with box cutters.

You are either a liar or an ignorant fool. Those of us, that little minority that still advocates personal responsibility AND the self-determination of destiny, some call us Libertarians, others call us Survivalists, still others call us Doomsayer Wackos...

...WE foresaw that. And nobody listened to us. Too much passion about how they needed to keep the evil instruments out of "places like that" and "curtailing freedoms in a limited manner in order to promote safe passage," two age-old fallacies that were debunked in the times of Benjamin Franklin, were allowed to stand as unassailable truth to the point where the law itself was made to disarm and victimize air passengers everywhere.

It's interesting to note that an advocate of victim disarmament can envision all kinds of terrible things about his law-following neighbor with a gun, the average citizen who, while maybe not the brightest at all times, usually has absolutely no criminal motivation whatsoever, just "snapping" and going crazy and killing people, a relatively low probability, but has such a hard time envisioning determined, focused vessels of evil in human shapes actively seeking to take the lives of the people around them. Does anyone else see a selective imagination? Does anyone else see that these kinds of people, those who would disarm us, are more preoccupied with being frightened of their neighbors than they are of being perceptive to real, credible threats?

And you want to LISTEN to these people? And DO what THEY tell you? If you do, you are an idiot and deserve whatever happens to you.

Those "Airline Security Experts" for years told people to just stay calm, be passive, and do what the terrorists want; In essence, give up your right to self-determination to the guys with the guns in order to live on your knees as a slave instead of dying on your feet a free person. Therein lies the problem. The "Experts" told us, the people to do something patently un-american. And it took them years and years to convince people through coercion (if you don't follow our policy we will fire you) and force of law (let's make it a Federal Regulation to disarm the public and the pilots) that if they gave up their freedoms while on an aircraft, they would be fully protected from all harm, and that such protection could not happen if they did not give up those freedoms.

The truth is that THEY LIED. THEY COULD NOT PROVIDE SUCH PROTECTION AND HAVE TAKEN OUR FREEDOMS ANYWAY. We the people have given up an essential liberty in exchange for safety. We didn't get that safety, as September Eleventh painfully shows. We should get our freedom back because those we made the bargain with didn't live up to their end.

THOUSANDS OF US DIED BECAUSE OF THAT BARGAIN. It's a bargain you enter into every single time you fly, yet you continue to fly, because...why?

Because you need to get places, and so do I. And the airlines know it. There's no airline that can offer "concealed carry flights" even though now many of the states that you and I live in have a licensing program for properly trained non-professionals to carry firearms for personal protection, creating a de-facto crime-free zone about them. People are out there, right now, taking care of their everyday business, secure in the fact that should the "unimaginable" happen to them, they are PREPARED and ABLE to deal with it RIGHT THEN, instead of waiting for the "professionals" to come and take care of it FOR them. I wonder how feasible it would be, to have an "Armed Commercial Aircraft Endorsement" proviso for that licensure, indicating that the License holder has taken an FAA-approved course in firearms safety specifically for aircraft. Of course, that's a pipe dream. The FAA would never approve such a thing; Look at how hard it's been just to get pilots re-armed, and they're the ones in charge of the aircraft!

But, you say, what about the detrimental effect of a single bullet fired through the fuselage of an aircraft? What about all that terrible stuff you see in the movies about explosive decompression?

You've been hoodwinked. Go talk to an aviation engineer about effects of a single hole in a pressurized cabin. If he tells you the truth, you will find out that the cabin is always exhausting air that is pulled in from the engines to pressurize it. That air is constantly being renewed...where do you think it goes?

And even THAT issue should not be prohibitive, as there were and are projectiles on the open commercial market specifically designed for use inside aircraft. They're called "safety rounds" and are made by such manufacturers as Glaser and MagSafe; These prefragmented projectiles are designed to shatter when they strike anything hard, and stay together in anything soft. They were developed to the specifications of the Air Marshals, the very folks who are ALLOWED and REQUIRED to carry firearms on board aircraft RIGHT NOW, back in the mid 1980's.

So, yes, that's right. It is theoretically possible for licensed concealed carry holders to safely carry arms on board aircraft, as they did before the Pilot's Association started trying to make airlines safer for terrorists and airlines started trying to capitulate to the criminal demands of madmen instead of dealing with them from a position of strength.

Those capitulatory directives allowed a stage to be set, just waiting for a terrible situation like September Eleventh to occur. Unlike the gun control doomsayers who have predicted "the wild west" time after time in every state that allows concealed carry, and are wrong EVERY SINGLE TIME, We, who predicted that when you disarm the honest citizen you make him vulnerable to the criminal element, have been painfully right.

But go ahead, listen to those experts on the airline payroll who tell you to sit down and shut up and not give the terrorists any reason to do anything bad to you. Those experts' advice got over a thousand people killed in the space of a few hours. I'd say that they were more than just a little bit wrong, don't you?

Then what kind of an idiot are you for not saying anything to these airlines who are now confiscating nail clippers at the sterile areas?? That stupidity didn't work, so now we're getting more of the same, with the same empty promises AND YOU ARE BUYING IT???

Idiots. All of you. And me. Every time I submit myself to the humiliation of ensuring I have properly given up my freedom to self-defense, I am an idiot, because I am placing my life in the hands of people who do not have my best interests at heart, and I know full well they cannot and will not stop a determined shade of evil in human form from wreaking his havoc on board my aircraft. If they could, there would have BEEN no September Eleventh to painfully remember.

But it's not that I believe their lies. It is that I have chosen to give up my freedom for the convenience of flying, as have all of you idiots just like me.

After watching the movie "Cast Away" with Tom Hanks, I noted that he could have done a lot better, a lot sooner, had he had his little swiss army knife on his keychain (remember him looking at it after he got back with a wistful look before he got in his car?), or perhaps a couple other pieces of survival gear, real basics like a small knife, or a lighter perhaps?

On today's aircraft, I cannot even carry on either one of those things, due to "security" regulations. So that's another way those experts are going to try to make sure you die; By preventing you from having the very tools you need to live should you survive the crash of an aircraft in a remote area. Yes, I know, the likelihood of surviving the initial crash is slim...but to not have anything to assist your survival, it almost insures that you will become a nice, clean statistic instead of a messy live witness to testify as to how how racked up behind the 8-ball you were by those greedy airlines.

The airlines know: Dead folks are just dead and it's sad. Pay the family, move on. But a live person, a live witness, can go to court and testify against them, documenting their negligence and culpable misdeeds. Corpses don't have press conferences and the airlines know it.

So when you get on an aircraft, you are a dead person walking until you step off. You are a corpse. A statistic. Another potential black eye if something happens that the airline cannot and will not protect you from. They can't prevent planes from crashing; They can't prevent terrorists from boarding; Yet, they arrogantly take away whatever possibility you had for surviving either event.

They tell us we can't do that. That we're not allowed to protect our lives while in "their custody."

Why bother complaining? We continue to put ourselves in harm's way by listening to people who not only do not care whether or not we survive, but would prefer that under certain circumstances, that we died. We deserve what we get.

I think that if people were able to carry guns onto planes, terrorists would adapt other means of inflicting terror on us. Whether or not carrying guns onto planes is right or wrong, it wouldn't stop terrorists. They would devise other strategies. The way to stop terrorists is to fight them as we are fighting them now, in an all out war, cutting off their funding, taking on their safe haven states, and hunting them and killing them. So you can complain about guns and pocketknives on commercial flights, but that is not how the war will be won.

I think you completely missed my point. Carrying guns on board aircraft isn't about winning the war. It's about personal responsibility for your own safety. My point is why make it easier for terrorists? Your own post indicates that "it wouldn't stop terrorists, they would devise other strategies."

YOU ARE RIGHT! They would have to devise other strategies, and THAT IS THE POINT! Make them devise OTHER strategies, other than just strolling on an aircraft with a box cutter and killing over a thousand people.

C'mon folks, let's not make it TOO easy for them, huh? Make 'em work for it a little?

Is that too much to ask?

DG

I agree. The refineries, chemical plants and power plants I work at are known targets. Islamists have been caught surveilling some of them by taking pictures and notes. At least one I know of had a Muslim engineer employee disappear the weekend before 9/11 with blue prints and lied about where he was going. It turned out his ID was fake.

Back in the sixties and seventies employees would bring shotguns and rifles to work with them in order to hunt or go shooting after work. Now you can be fired for having a firearm locked in your trunk in the parking lot. Why would they think they have more to fear from their employees than terrorists? Lunacy!

We sat, galvanized, to our televisions, while the media kept broadcasting the crashes...

Uhm, 'galvanized' means something like 'shocked into action.' That doesn't resonate with sitting on the couch.

When you have a disaster of that proportion, nobody wants to take the blame, least of all the actual people responsible

I object to characterizing a catastrophic criminal act as being a disaster. 'Disaster' is related to astral, astrology, and asteroid. It means 'bad stars,' which means things happening to us beyond our control. Bad luck. Homicide is more than bad luck. It has clearly defined people being responsible, ie, the killers.

Next in that chain of responsibility are the passengers in the planes with them.

You've been watching the Budweiser commercial, haven't you? "If my teammates had jumped on my four fumbles, we wouldn't have lost them. It's their fault, not mine." Enough of this hubris-hobbled inanity. Let's cut to the chase.

My Dear God in Heaven, what fools we are.

Speak for yourself. Oh, and get a good dictionary.

The other two aircraft's passengers ability to determine their destiny were left dangerously dormant, and they died for it, and in the process killed thousands of others.

Three.

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