Emergency, Survival, Camping And Preparedness Equipment

Why Pilots Can't Have Guns

by Bruce Gold

This is one of those peculiar issues where the authorities - who claim to be reasonable - cling with desperate intensity to patent nonsense. We are treated to the sober claim that arming pilots, or even a few pilots, with mere pistols is "too dangerous" to merit serious consideration. Conversely, blowing an entire airliner out of the sky because it "appears to be hijacked" or because it "won't follow instructions" is prudent and contributes to "safety."

One wonders?

If we examine the current airport/aircraft security measures we find that the official position has an even looser grip on reality. The main thrust of airline security is to create a zone of absolute disarmament that prevents harm by denying terrorists the means to do harm. In theory, this approach is sensible, no weapons means no attacks, or at least no successful attacks. All that's required is perfection.

Failing this perfection the "safe zone" becomes a trap. Failing a perfect airtight security that absolutely eliminates even trivial weapons like box cutters, the "disarmed safety zone" becomes a "disarmed victim zone." The successful implementation of the strategy requires the exclusion of every weapon that human ingenuity could possibly contrive. Multiply this requirement by thousands of airports, thousands of flights, tens of thousands of employees and millions of passengers and you get an reasonably good idea how likely "success" is. The demonstrable fact that the terrorists can spend unlimited time planning, before choosing when, where and how to attack, does not improve the odds.

Having constructed this marvel, the authorities then try to cover up its staggering costs and structural impossibility by recruiting us to the task. Henceforth, the patient and passive obedience of all is required. All must be treated like criminals and all must submit. The officials will control all, oversee all, direct all, and the citizen is reduced to passive obedience. Naturally, since the creation and maintenance of this airtight security zone is a matter of life and death, the most draconian rules and laborious procedures are easily justified. After all, it is for the safety of all in the current crisis. A failure will be a failure of the public to "do its part."

A closer examination of this rhetoric reveals a somewhat different picture. While we can agree that a life and death emergency is justifiable grounds for total control, we must also give some thought to the nature of this "emergency." The trick in the reasoning is that most places, most of the time, there is no emergency. A little research or reflection demonstrates just how rare hijackings or plane bombings really are. In a curious way this makes absolute control attractive, the "potential" of a life and death situation gives justification, and the remote likelihood of it actually happening gives lots of cover.

Except in the rare instances of an actual attack, performance standards don't have to be very high. This is an open invitation to empire-building and ego inflation. Safety precautions can be reduced to bureaucratic process and street theatre, and still be "adequate" most of the time.

Since the airtight "disarmament zone" strategy is a doomed exercise in futility, we are left with the question of why arming pilots is so "impossible." Logically it would seem sensible to create a final defensive zone in the cockpit. Arming pilots (with whatever conditions) is relatively cheap, easy and likely to be both highly effective and administratively workable. Unfortunately such a common sense solution has insuperable flaws. The most important one being that it would require the examination of official assumptions that are outside the boundary of PC discourse.

So, at the risk of being politically incorrect, let us venture the forbidden discourse and examine the deeper logic of an apparently irrational insistence.

We can note that most of the objections to armed pilots rest on three truisms:
1. The ability of Officials to provide safety and order.
2. The near absolute inability of the private citizen to cope.
3. That the benefits of a top-down order imposed through regulation outweighs the costs.

Let us examine these in turn:
1. The ability of Officials to provide safety and order.

We can begin by noting that Officialdoms' ability to provide order is beyond dispute (We shall put aside the question of what order and how achieved.). We can also acknowledge that advanced industrial societies need a fair amount of order to function. However, the claim that Officialdom also provides safety is problematic at best. If this claim were true there would be no crime. For how could crime exist if everyone was effectively and actually protected all of the time? No victims necessarily means no crimes. Despite Officialdom's waffle about "safe communities" (without safe individuals!) it's clear that every single crime successfully committed is an instance of officialdoms' failure to protect.

Police, our much-heralded "protectors", are so only in the general sense of protecting communities. In the specific sense of protecting the individuals in our communities they fail miserably. They fail to protect us in practice and have no legal obligation or responsibility to protect individuals in law. This last bit, that the police have no legal liability if they fail to protect individuals, is a dead giveaway that Officialdom knows they can not and do not protect individuals. Accordingly, they specifically and explicitly protect themselves from any legal or financial responsibility.

This leads to a very nasty situation. Police are almost never at a crime until the actual crime is over. Victims, by definition, are always there. However, the victim has legal restrictions on their right to self-defense, including restrictions on the means to self-defense. The Police, who have the legal authority and are supplied with the means, are absent. In effect, the Authorities have put the police, courts and legislature at the service of criminals by restricting their victims right and ability to self defense, without actually taking the responsibility themselves. (Legal, financial and criminal responsibility not rhetoric!)

With this pretense, that pursuing criminals after the fact is equal to "protection", Officialdom both recognizes it failure to actually protect individuals and justifies laws restricting self-defense and the means of self-defense. This is often accompanied with blame-the-victim rhetoric about how they "should not have been out," or they "failed to take precautions" etc.

This obvious failure, combined with an "official truth" of non-failure, usually leads Officialdom to expand the "crime" into easily detected substitutes. Terrorists break through, but people breaking technicality laws with no criminal intent are caught. Officialdom then brags about how they have caught a "criminal" and prevented a "crime." Since it is extremely difficult to catch real criminals, a number of questionable "indicators" and pseudo "technicality crimes" substitute for real success. Paying cash, no advanced booking, arrival just before flight, etc., all become indicators of "crime", and people with no criminal intent become criminals, trapped in an ever expanding net of new laws and regulations criminalizing activity "associated" with the actual crime. This doesn't stop real criminals but it serves to dissipate police efforts and actually helps real criminals by giving them a crowd of "suspects" to hide in.

2. The near absolute inability of the private citizen to cope.

A little reflection shows that most people cope with the problems and dilemmas of their lives. Most people, most of the time, are successful at it. Nor is there any shortage of people able to cope with crisis and danger. Any common disaster demonstrates the resilience, courage and sense of the "common people." However, the official truth of public ineptitude is proven by official pronouncement. This official doctrine of public incompetence is often supported by official compulsion. People are denied access to information or resources, then criticized for their ineptitude. Much of the anti-gun rhetoric of the "impossibility" of self-defense rests on laws that systematically remove the means of self-defense. When Officials talk about "preventing public panic" it is usually a sure sign of Official panic and pure funk.

There is also a profound shift in consciousness and political order as adults are re-conceptualized as adolescents incapable of self-control or judgment. This is problematic for democracy and the future of the Republic since both rest on a certain respect and regard for the common man's ability. Some critics have expressed this as the dumbing down of civil virtue. It is a shift from people establishing their own government by their own authority to an order based on the betters governing their inferior subjects. George III would have understood.

3. That the benefits of a top-down order imposed through regulation outweigh the costs.

This assertion rests on the first two but is also promoted in its own right. We can recognize that it has a core of truth. Complex societies need order, which in turn requires an authority with both power and the will to use it. (The whole matter of government is tied to the issue of power and how best to both use and control it.) However, there is a not-so-subtle twist in how this is being presented. We can see that the basis of order no longer rests on the authority and consent of the governed, but shifts to the bureaucrat acting in their own right and justifying that right by the commandeering of delegated power. This is done in the name of "responsibility." The conceit is that the commandeering of delegated power is justified by the superiority of the delegated and the inferiority of the "common people." In this twisted vision, Officialdom replaces the People as the foundation on which the Republic stands. George III would have understood, although it appears George II does not.

This is not an argument against delegated power or regulations in themselves. Such things, in their place and in correspondence to common problems and sensible solutions, are both necessary and wise. It is an argument against an endless proliferation of regulations that seek to ambush problems by conceptualizing the People themselves as "the problem." It is an argument against delegated authority that tries to overcome its failures by attacking law-abiding people with a maze of laws concerning "associated activities."

The problem of criminals committing crimes with guns shifts to the "problem" of certain types of gun, which shifts to the "problem" of too-big magazines. We are left with the reality that mere possession of a certain type of metal box capable of holding bullets is a "serious crime." Resources and punishments then divert from criminal use of guns to "criminal possession" of little metal boxes. "Success" shifts from stopping real criminals committing "real" crimes to prosecuting easily caught and punished citizens for easily proven "crimes." The immense, multi-billion dollar effort of gun registrations is another good example of how Officialdom "shifts the crime" to promote their claim of success. The law abiding are regulated and restricted at immense effort and cost. The truly criminal easily avoid the effort. Tiny minorities of truly stupid criminals are caught and a large number of law-abiding are criminalized over misunderstandings or decades-old petty offenses.

This is not a criticism of regulation itself or the need for authority. It is a criticism of a shift from honest crime control to street theatre. That these schemes often reflect attempts at social engineering, and the enforcement of minority opinions that have failed to persuade any except the Authorities, is no improvement.

Putting aside the question of the "proper" order for society, the very inefficiency of this Soviet style top-down regime by regulation assures its failure. There is no possibility that addressing specific and localized problems, (criminals with guns or Middle Eastern terrorists) with crackdowns on the general population, or crackdowns on supposedly "related activities", is doable. The very strategy, in its basic conception, is self-defeating. The decades long drug war is a grim testimony to the falsity of the argument that we are "only one civil liberty" from success or that we are only "one more law" away from success.

~ Conclusion ~
It is clearly possible to arm pilots, just as it is clearly possible to arm police or arm security guards. Nor is it impossible because it is ineffective. It presents would-be terrorists with an armed, defended zone on the aircraft and leaves them trying to plan around the uncertainty of which pilots are armed. Nor does the lunatic suggestion that blowing up the whole plane better explain why pilots cannot be armed.

They cannot be armed because doing so would undercut decades of propaganda and opinion building. They cannot be armed because it draws attention to Officialdom's failure to protect. Most importantly it might start a debate over the role and place of the Authorities. Official truth might come up against actual empirical evidence.

The real problem with arming pilots is the gap between official truth and reality. Examining this gap would lead to discussions that are outside the boundaries of Political Correctness. That in turn might lead to a questioning of official pretense, its conceits and its consequences.

Clearly, pilots cannot be armed.

*This article is copyrighted by it's author, Bruce Gold, and reprinted here with his kind permission. Bruce Gold is a professional researcher and analyst, with a Master's in Intellectual History and a Master's in Public Administration.  He is author of the book InfoWar in Cyberspace: Researcher on the Net, a primer for students, researchers and Internet activists. Bruce has written two other outstanding articles, The 2nd Amendment, a Historical Understanding, and Ten Good Reasons to Ban Guns. Keep up the great work, Mr. Gold!

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