It Happened Here

A Different Drummer ^ | 13 May 2001 | Nicholas Stix

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Thanx.

[WRhine]

Now I want it rebuilt as the biggest freepin' statement of freedom in the world.

Let's go for a double 200 stories this time around.

[wcbtinman]

I want you to provide me with the list of menaces the govt has caught before they could menace further."

Can't prove a negative.

So I guess you want me to just sit there, defenseless, because you can dream up some scenario where there might be a problem. Yep, you sound just like a lawyer...or a gun control nut.

Why would you agree with me on the ground, but think I'm incompetent in the air?

[HiTech RedNeck]

Why would you think the logistics of gun fights are anywhere comparable while in the cabin of a 767 at 30,000 feet, as on the ground or in a building?

[mrustow]

Trouble is, we still don't KNOW whether the hijacker is intent on wrecking the craft. The hijackers in Sept 11 lied and promised to land the craft safely.

From now on, we must assume that every hijacker is a suicide bomber. Should we or the authorities err in some case, the onus is on the hijacker. The suicide bombers have forever changed the rules of engagement.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The point is, that we don't just want to answer a hijacker by having some citizen cowboy pick up his land-trained six-shooter and drill holes in both the hijacker and the plane.

[mrustow]

Agreed.

[mrustow]

Ah, Sen. Kerry. From the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? There is a man who craves to become irrelevant. And I will not begrudge him that status.

[mrustow]

Ground: apples; air: oranges.

[mrustow]

Another determined irrelevancy masquerading as a leader.

[Fred25]

I don’t understand something. Does anyone know the reason why the FAA doesn’t allow pilots and flight attendants to have weapons they can use to fight off attackers who don’t have guns? I mean, a dozen or so baseball bats hidden in around the planes in food lockers, bathroom closets, and in the pilot’s cabin might have kept these last four planes from being hijacked.

About 15 years ago, I took a long machete in a fancy sheath on board a plane as I left El Salvador. A lady flight attendant at the door told me she would have to store the machete in the pilot’s cabin during the flight, so I handed it to her. After landing I picked it up at the airline’s ticket desk at the New Orleans airport. During the flight, I felt comfortable knowing that at least one pilot had a weapon he could use in flight, if someone without a gun attempted to hijack our plane.

During the last few years, there have been many stories about pilots and male passengers having to subdue crazy passengers. One crazy guy was literally strangled to death on a flight by some of the passengers who held him to the floor while he was struggling.

So what would be wrong with the airlines just having a few baseball bats stashed away in different places around each plane? I don’t know if baseball bats can go up against guns, but they surely could go up against four guys with small knives and box cutters, or single crazy passengers who go berserk, or a crazy co-pilot like the one who crashed the Egypt-Air flight in the ocean a year or so ago.

[wcbtinman]

I can see that common sense just anin't gonna work with you.

[HiTech RedNeck]

You must mean, with yourself. Go ahead then. Take your sixshooter onboard, cowboy. As well as the terrorist, of course... there can be no discrimination. Shoot it out, not at the OK Corral, but at 30,000 feet. But do me a favor, not over my house please!