{"id":2475,"date":"2002-05-21T12:25:44","date_gmt":"2002-05-21T12:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=20"},"modified":"2002-05-21T12:25:44","modified_gmt":"2002-05-21T12:25:44","slug":"no-guns-in-cockpits-says-the-undersecretary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2475","title":{"rendered":"NO GUNS IN COCKPITS, says the Undersecretary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, gosh, golly, gee. Here\u0092s an example of why I don\u0092t understand what the Bush administration is doing at all.
\nGet a clue guys: Every time I get on a commercial airplane, my life and the lives of everyone aboard are in the hands of the flight crew. I think we\u0092ve all had a pretty clear demonstration of what a pilot can do with a loaded and fuelled airplane, haven\u0092t we?
\nAnd you won\u0092t trust them with a handgun?
\nTo quote from the Undersecretary\u0092s testimony (from CNN<\/a>):<\/p>\n

“Utilizing the experience of my 40 years of law enforcement and consulting with all the interested parties and having our staff with a lot of experience look at this issue, and obviously consulting all along the way with Secretary Mineta … I will not authorize firearms in the cockpit,” Magaw told the committee. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Exactly what experience in law enforcement tells him that in a life-or-death struggle, less-lethal weapons (including beanbags, tasers, pepper sprays) work? In a number of training exercises I\u0092m privy to, a significant percentage of those sprayed with pepper spray were able to continue attacks successfully; and the literature and newpapers are full of circumstances in which people have been tased or shot with beanbags and not stopped. I know and train with a number of law enforcement officers, and there isn\u0092t one who would go into a threatening situation armed only with a Taser.
\nUntil someone produces a working Star Trek Phaser, the only way we have for someone who isn\u0092t one of the Gracie brothers (world Ultimate Fighting champions) to immediately stop someone from doing something we really, really don\u0092t want them to do is to use a gun.
\nAs noted in a few places below, I think that we are seeing the delineation of two clear \u0096philosophies \u0096 in politics, business and elsewhere. The great metaphor there is \u0093Cathedral and the Bazaar\u0094<\/a>; in one, people perform specialized functions as a part of an orchestrated grand vision. Leave defending yourself to the professionals, they would say in this case.
\nIn the other, we have large numbers of individuals who associate within a loose set of rules, and where the overall organizing principles arise \u0093organically\u0094 from these interactions. They evaluate the situation, quickly decide what to do, and act. Kind of like the folks on Flight 93.
\nI think that it ought to be obvious that no centrally controlled and managed, highly specialized \u0093cathedral\u0094 can be built that will secure us from the kind of violence the Islamofascists have used. The only real safeguard, as evidenced by the actions of the heroes below (and on Flight 93), is the concerted and intelligent actions of the population as a whole. The bus passenger in this story<\/a> (scroll down) who:<\/p>\n

Two alert passers-by succeeded yesterday morning in foiling a terrorist attack, apparently aimed for the town of Afula. The suicide bomber blew himself up a short while later while being questioned by Border Policemen. No one else was hurt in the blast.
\nAt around 7 A.M. yesterday, Natan Yadan, 54, of Moshav Nir Yafeh, was waiting at the Ta’anachim junction in the north for the bus that takes him to work at a Defense Ministry facility in the Haifa Bay area. He noticed “a well-shaven
\nand well-dressed young man in sports clothes” who looked suspicious.
\nYadan later said: “I kept a distance from him and put my hand on my revolver.”
\nWhen the bus arrived, Yadan climbed on and saw that the youth was trying to enter the bus as well. “I pushed him back and told him it was a special bus. He indicated to me that he was a mute, but I repeated that even so, he was not allowed to ascend.”
\nYadan then called Afula police from the bus. He described the youth as being “very nervous and very well dressed, and no more than 17 or 19 years old.”
\nAt around the same time, Shimshon Arbel, a civilian worker in the Israel Defense Forces who was driving a military vehicle, noticed a suspicious-looking youth crossing the junction in the direction of Afula. He called the police and asked that they dispatch a patrol car to the area immediately.
\nThe Border Policemen, who were nearby, arrived at the scene within minutes and began asking the youth questions. When they told him to show his ID card, he put his hand in his pocket, stepped back a few meters and blew himself up.
\nThe two alert citizens heard the news of the suicide bomber on their way to work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On some level, we are each going to have to be responsible for our own security. Get used to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, gosh, golly, gee. Here\u0092s an example of why I don\u0092t understand what the Bush administration is doing at all. Get a clue guys: Every time I get on a commercial airplane, my life and the lives of everyone aboard are in the hands of the flight crew. I think we\u0092ve all had a pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}