Warm Fuzzies

That's how I feel about Washington when I read stuff like this editorial in the Washington Times:

After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.

Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.

I don't know how accurate this editorial is, especially in blaming it on the O-Man as George Bush was never a lover of the program, but if this is going on, we should all thank our government for protecting us from pilots who have the power to shoot themselves in order to crash their planes.

Pilots cannot openly speak about the changing policies for fear of retaliation from the Transportation Security Administration. Pilots who act in any way that causes a “loss of confidence” in the armed pilot program risk criminal prosecution as well as their removal from the program. Despite these threats, pilots in the Federal Flight Deck Officers program have raised real concerns in multiple interviews.

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, and all that, you know.

Arming pilots after Sept. 11 was nothing new. Until the early 1960s, American commercial passenger pilots on any flight carrying U.S. mail were required to carry handguns. Indeed, U.S. pilots were still allowed to carry guns until as recently as 1987. There are no records that any of these pilots (either military or commercial) ever causing any significant problems.

No records? The evil Reagan/Carter/Ford/Nixon/Johnson/Kennedy/Eisenhower/Truman/Roosevelt cabal probably deleted the records of all the gunfights among flight crews.

Seriously folks, whoever is behind this is an idiot.