[NittanyLion]

The TSA's conduct is outrageous.

[from occupied ga]

King George II is anti-gun. Of course he isn't going to make this easier.

[WestPacSailor]

The TSA's conduct is outrageous.

Quite often this is the case with most federal agencies. Even worse, they're screwing around with our safety, not just a few petty regulations concerning our lawns, or our mail delivery.

[marktwain]

"...TSA chief James Loy (search) reluctantly went along with it. Pilots say the agency now is dragging its feet because it didn't want the program in the first place.

Notice AP's obvious bias. The title of this article should be: "TSA drags feet on public safety" or "Mineta obstructs congressional mandate to secure planes".

Talk about obvious left wing bias!

[sam_paine]

Well, you don't actually have to arm all 40k to be effective deterrent. No more than you'd have to have a cop under every bridge to deter speeding. Get the word out that you may encounter a gun, and terrorists have to plan for that possibility. Which means they'll have to bring more than a knife to the fight, which at least makes their choice more difficult.

[OldFriend]

Frankly, I would feel a lot safer if the pilot did NOT open the cockpit door to the passenger area.

Would much prefer funds to be spent on screening baggage.

[tahiti]

"Let's get the pilots armed in enough quantities to serve as an adequate deterrent,"

If our government had not unconstitutionally prohibited a private airline company from making it's own decision whether to invite their customers to be armed while being transported on their aircraft, 3,000 U.S. citizens never would have died on September 11, 2001 at the hands of plastic knife wielding hijackers.

Of course, armed pilots or for that matter, armed passengers would be a deterrent to a hijacker.

Do you think the Muslim terrorists would have even tried to hatch a plan to hijack commercial airliners for the purposes of terrorism if they knew that on a regular basis there would be 10, 30, 60, maybe 100 passengers armed on any one flight?

Of course not.

With the threat of terrorism on our soil, we should be advocating the expansion and exertion of our Second Amendment rights, not abdicating to the exclusion of that right.

Benjamin Franklin said it best:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety."

[zerosix]

Well TSA is rather busy, what with body pat downs of 60 yr old grandmothers and double scanning hip and knee replacements of gramps.

[dogbrain]

Yes, arming pilots is PART of the solution.
But let's hope there's more being done to keep known or suspected terrorists from getting into this country, not to mention onto an airliner, in the first place.