The idea of mixing legal weapons with pilots is not new. Aviators of yore often carried firearms–and with good reason. There are more recent incidents that support the practice. In the mid-1960s, an airliner was taken over by a man wielding a gun who shot both pilots. In another incident a disgruntled PSA employee broke into the cockpit of a BAe 146 in 1987 and shot and killed both pilots. The airplane crashed near San Louis Obispo, Calif., killing all 43 people aboard. Then there was the crazed FedEx employee, riding as a deadheading crewmember, who in 1994 tried to commandeer a DC-10 with the intent of crashing it into FedEx’s Memphis package sorting facility. And the King Air that was almost commandeered in New Mexico in 2001. The list of incidents is compelling.
After 9/11, a cry went out once again to allow handguns in the cockpits of airliners as a final ring of security against another armed takeover. Spurred on by the Air Line Pilots Association, a lobby group–over the objections of President Bush, DOT Secretary Norman Mineta and even Homeland Security’s Tom Ridge–succeeded in passing the Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act of 2002. Last year follow-on legislation also passed Congress, allowing cockpit crewmembers of all-cargo flights to carry firearms.
