Posted on 06/05/2002 7:48:49 PM PDT by SteveH
Hoplophobia
Transportation security chief John Magaw appears to be in the human sacrifice business.
Despite the fact that our military is authorized to shoot down hijacked airliners, he insists that airline pilots not be armed.
Hoplophobia is characterized by inordinate and unreasonable fear of personal arms and items perceived as personal arms (e.g., nail files, tools), as distinguished from the understandable apprehension of dealing with assailants.
All this hoplophobic attitude by pencil pushers like Magaw does is provide safe platforms from which air pirates and terrorists can commit crimes.
He was quoted as saying that terrorists no longer will sweat security: they will seize weapons from flight deck crews. Does he honestly think the pilot will just hand them over rather than shoot the hijackers?
New bullet technologies now provide ammunition that will stop hijackers while minimizing risk of puncturing the outer skin of the airliner.
I want, as an absolute minimum, my Ka-Bar combat knife on my person before ever setting foot on a commercial airliner. If I could choose any mode of transportation available in the 19th, 20th, or 21st centuries for transport anywhere in the lower 48 states, and were it available today, I would choose the stagecoach.
Unlike the hoplophobic attitude of commercial air, stagecoach passengers were expected to show up heavily armed, and could participate in defending against "land pirates," terrorists and military action by various indigenous tribes whose land the white man expropriated in our expansion.
Andy Breglia
Fremont
rarely had a need for a weapon...
but as a good American, I support the rights of others to "keep and bear arms"...
besides, when I did get a chance to shoot I always hit the "bulls-eye"...
God Bless the United States of America!!!
One
This is so STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!
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