Posted on 07/24/2002 4:08:01 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
In a dramatic turnaround, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has ordered the new head of the Transportation Security Administration to study options for arming the nation's 70,000 commercial pilots with "lethal force" capabilities.
"It is under discussion in terms of should we take another approach," Mineta told the House Transportation Committee's aviation subcommittee during testimony on Tuesday. "I have asked [TSA Administrator James Loy] to take a look at this to see whether or not there is some alternative, even if it is lethal weapons."
Loy, former head of the U.S. Coast Guard, replaced John Magaw as head of TSA last week.
"We're pleased to see the sea change that the Department of Transportation is undergoing and their new willingness to consider arming pilots with lethal force," said Capt. Tracy Price, head of the Airline Pilots' Security Alliance, an industry group that supports allowing pilots to carry guns. "This common sense measure has overwhelming support in both houses of Congress, among professional airline pilots and with the American people."
"We're considering this an endorsement of all the work we've been doing" on legislation that would permit pilots to fly armed, said Brian Darling, a spokesman for Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H.
Mineta, a Clinton appointee held over by Bush, historically has opposed allowing pilots to fly armed. But his change of heart comes at a time when many on Capitol Hill and in the administration were becoming frustrated with the TSA's slow progress towards improving airport security – its primary function.
Besides facing charges by some lawmakers that the TSA has frittered away much of its resources on bureaucracy building, sources in Washington say some inside the Bush administration are becoming exasperated with the TSA's seeming inability to meet a November deadline to have all airport security screeners in place, as promised by Mineta and Magaw.
Magaw also had come under fire from lawmakers and pilots' groups for deciding in April not to implement a provision of aviation security law that allowed pilots to carry guns. The law, passed last fall in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, created the TSA and outlined its core mission.
Earlier this summer Smith introduced a bill bypassing Transportation bureaucracy and directly authorizing qualified pilots to fly armed. Smith's bill also absolved U.S. air carriers of any legal liabilities, should passengers be injured or killed during the course of a pilot defending his plane against a hijacking.
The House has already passed a bill that would implement many of the provisions of Smith's bill.
The Senate Commerce Committee has scheduled hearings for Thursday to discuss the issue of arming pilots. The committee's chairman, Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., has been opposed to allowing pilots to fly armed.
But First Officer Robert Sproc, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, said, "We are very pleased that Secretary Mineta has validated what we have been saying all along." He added, "We are going to continue to press Congress to move ahead with efforts" to pass armed pilot legislation. The Allied Pilots Association is the pilots' union for American Airlines.
Mineta said a program to train and arm pilots could cost up to $850 million to develop and around $250 million a year to maintain.
Exactly. Magaw was a fool. Good riddance.
Amazing, isn't it? Anyone with two brain cells to rub together has the sense enough to know it's better to have armed pilots as a last line of defense. Yet Washington commissions a 'study' to tell them the obvious.
Exactly. This is typical Washington Beltway BS. Why can't that little chump Minutia just admit that it took some convincing, but he was wrong in his first assessment and now feel comfortable with the legislation.
Quick Reference: Minutia because he seems to be a policy wonk with his head buried...
I volunteer...lemme think...*stares off into space in dep thought and concentration*
Yup...an armed pilot can take out a box cutter totiing towel head...study concludes!
"Step this way ACs...Glock 40s for all!
End of study, start of safer flight!
Yep, but he definitely needs to go IMHO. No common sense - typical of those who came in with The Criminal.
Let's get a George W. appointee in there.
Gubmint weenies are the only people in the United States who haven't been able to see that there is a very serious flaw in their approach to this whole mess.
This is pathetic. This program could be done very cost-effectively, not anywhere near $1 billion to implement and 1/4 of that to maintain.
Follow the money.
The 'study' will be carried out by a group of political hacks who have each done something to earn them a six-figure part-time politico temp-job, at taxpayer's expense.
Proof positive what a crack-smoking, big-government sh!t-sucking bureaucrat this lousy bugger is. Give the program over to the NRA and they could run it for five percent of that. Hell, give it to me, and I could run it for three percent! (I'm not greedy! $;-)
"850 million" dollars -- Spare me! Sounds like another typical, over-bloated, money-wasting federal program!
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