Pilots with Pistols

It is most difficult for a conservative talk show host to be against arming pilots. Hell, it's just not American. Most of our audience believes pilots should be armed with a Clint Eastwood, arm slung .44 Magnum with Teflon tips. That sounds great on paper, but is it? Maybe the best way to paint this into a mental imagery is in scenario form.

Let's just say you and the family are taking that long awaited vacation; jetting to Disney World. The kids are two rows in front of you and appear to be behaving themselves. Your daughter is sixteen going on twenty-one, blond hair and beautiful. Your son is twelve and wants to sit in the co-pilot's seat because it's boring sitting next to his sister. There's the usual anticipation of the flight, the excitement of arrival and the commitment to have fun if it kills the both of you.

Then, all of sudden your dreams turn to nightmares. A man about five foot ten inches tall in the row right in front of your children stands up, grabs your daughter and presses a razor sharp box cutter against the soft flesh of her throat. In those first few incredulous moments, she struggles enough to cause the tip of the razor to draw a few drops of fresh blood. Instantaneously, another terrorist puts the same chokehold on an elderly lady near the rear of the jet. You know that every move and every step is planned. You also know where this is leading.

A third hijacker near the last row of the plane stands up and quickly grabs another hostage. His eyes are glazed over and he barks out in his heavily accented voice, "You will remain calm or we will slice the throat of our hostages. It will be YOU who will cause their deaths. If you should decide to be heroes, before you act, know these people shall die in the name of Allah!"

Both of you are frozen. With 9-11 coming alive in a real personal way, you know they mean business. At this point, a fourth man slowly rises from his seat and walks briskly to the back of the plane. Your son screams and he's kicked in the mouth. Your eyes are transfixed on the blade and the blood from your daughter's throat. The fourth man checks the bathroom to make sure it's empty. He leans against the door. Two of the hijackers with hostages make their way to the front of the plane. Shielded by innocent hostages, they bark practiced commands for the passengers in First Class to vacate immediately. As they lean their backs against either side of the reinforced cabin doors the tension mounts.

Like precision clockwork, the other two terrorists at the rear of the plane make their move. Oh, by the way, if you're wondering how they got box cutters on board, it was easy. They detached them from each terrorist executive-edition briefcase. The gold, initialed plate between the handle of each briefcase had been modified beautifully to conceal the dangerous weapon.

Now we have three hostages. The fourth terrorist announces his intention of frisking each individual passenger. "If there is a weapon on board from an air marshal that is not turned over now and it is found, one of your people will die immediately. It is you who can avoid bloodshed. We want only to be taken to Pakistani Airport!" As terrified parent (the fright in your daughter's eyes are drilling a hole in your heart) you pray these liars are telling the truth.

Frisking done, there is apparently no air marshal. So now, where's the pilot with the gun? Why hasn't Clint Eastwood charged from the cockpit and fired off four perfectly placed rounds into the temple of each scumbag? The cockpit camera is catching the every move, every sound. They've alerted the Air Force. Two F-15's are on the way (ETA-23 minutes). You glance at your watch's second hand; it moves like it's wearing leg-irons. Anger invades reality when you wonder why all the new protections from the federalization of airport screeners to pilots with pistols to reinforced doors did not prevent this. Now, it seems your daughter, the love of your life, just a few feet away from the both of you, is too far to save.

The young, stubble-faced hijacker who just completed the search now joins the others in the front of the plane. There's a loud knock on the cockpit door. At the top of his voice he yells, "Throw out your weapon in the next :60 seconds or we will slice the throat of the oldest to the youngest." The captain has the loaded pistol. What does he do? Sure he knows how to fire a gun, but where? If he barges out of the door, a thousand things could happen and 999 would be very, very bad for everybody on board. Damn, on paper this looked like a good idea. Maybe the plans were devised with the cockpit always in command. That's not real life. THIS is real life.

...Twenty-six seconds tick by.

The quite of the cabin is broken by a few scattered and muffled sobs. Whispered prayers in several languages come from trembling lips. You wonder what in the hell is going on in the cockpit. If the terrorists get the gun, it's all over. They can say they want to go to Pakistan, but you know deep in your heart your future doesn't look too promising at this point. What are the option? One, you're going to be shot down by the F-15 before the plane takes out thousands of people on the ground at some intended target. Two, you overtake the S.O.B's and save the day. That sounds great, but the names of the victims in tomorrow morning's headline could be your children.

..Ten seconds left.

The cockpit door doesn't open. The terrorists' eyes dance from their watches to the passengers. One more call. "The time is up. You slide gun on the floor or we kill. WE KILL! WE KILL!"

...:04-:03-:02-:01...

No movement from the cockpit door. A barely discernable nod is given by the terrorist yelling the commands. He charges two seats deep and grabs your 14-year-old son who is bleeding from the mouth and almost in shock. Now all four have hostages. Now you know if ANYBODY makes a move, your two children will be lying in a pool of their own blood.

"We tell you one more time to roll out the gun. No more warnings. Five seconds!"

The pilot is 63 years old. A former Navy pilot who's overworked, overweight and under pressure. In the real world, not too many pilots look like Clint Eastwood. That said, even Clint couldn't get off a good shot on each terrorist. Welcome to the real world. No movie producer here to say, "Cut, let's do that again crew and this time with feeling." If he throws the gun out the door, it's over. If he doesn't, people are going to die. It's a rock and a hard place and your whole world is caught in the middle.

...:05-:04...

You think, "This couldn't be happening!" But it is. You hope the pilot opens the cockpit door and slides the gun out. You know he's not. You know your two kids are a razor's edge away from death and you can't do one damn thing about it.

...03-:02...

At best the pilot thinks, if he charges out the door and can take one down, fewer people will die. But the odds of the gun not being taken over by three men on either side of the door; the odds that the shots will find their true mark and not more innocent people; the odds that chaos wins over calm, all of those are a 1000 to 1.

..:01..

Blood curdling screams come from the rear of the plane and in a spellbinding wave reach the front. The elderly lady in the lavender pantsuit slumps to the floor of the plane, momentarily quivering like an animal in shock. Blood spews everywhere. One of the terrorist grabs a rotund, short, balding man as a replacement. It's going down! Going down NOW! The cockpit sees it all, and you? Well, you…are now officially in the Twilight Zone.

I know this may be over dramatization. But then again, maybe not. Look, if I can make up this scenario as it's typed out, what can be done by terrorists with years of training and planning? A question I asked on a previous show was, "Can you be both a Conservative and a gun owner, and still not think arming pilots is a good idea?" Interesting question and we got tons of very good calls with thought provoking points. All that said, here are the (forgive me) bullet points why I think it's not a good idea.

-- Terrorists have the advantage. Again, they've planned both physically and mentally for this moment, with joy from Allah reaching orgasmic proportions. The pistol-packing pilot has to react in an environment of complete chaos. As I said before, 1000 things could happen and 999 of them are bad… real bad.

-- We should be using stun guns. I mean maximum, heavy-duty stun guns or stun batons. You see, 50,000 volts of electricity applied two to four seconds can give two senior citizens fresh from a Canasta's game, time to hog-tie a terrorist. I'd give the entire cockpit crew one stun gun each. Even if a stun gun falls into the hands of a terrorist, he couldn't fire ten rounds in the cockpit instrumentation or unload the weapon on the crew, the flight attendants or the passengers before yelling praise to Allah. Those accidentally stunned during the fracas will have a much better chance of telling this story to their grandkids.

-- Since 9-11 there is one irrefutable fact that has had a major impact on every future terrorist, every major airline in the world and every passenger who will ever fly again. When, not if, another plane is hijacked, passengers may have the final say in the outcome. The words, "Let's roll!" will reverberate in the minds and hearts of Americans for as long as there exist…Americans.

-- When the rubber hits the road, and it's YOU making life or death decisions for thousands, even millions of people, you go to the "Book of Statistics". That's the bible of the insurance company. They've done quite well. In a situation where all outcomes are bleak, which is statistically better? Forget being "machomaniacal". If you're stepping on a plane with YOUR family, which outcome is statistically safer? That's the only thing you can do. Putting a loaded gun behind a locked door solves nothing. If anything, statistically it could cause more problems. When it's your family 40,000 feet in the air, going 500 miles per hour with thousands of pounds of jet fuel sitting on either side of them, you begin to make decisions based more on odds than emotions. You package your emotions wrapped in prayers.

When President George W. Bush announced his rejection of guns in the cockpit, every talk show host in America jumped on him. He was called a gun grabber, a Clintonian, a Hillary kiss-up, a poor substitute for Al Gore and, oh yes, even worse---a moderate. To make this controversial decision the best he possible could, President Bush had at his disposal a stadium full of experts, statisticians, airline executives, airline pilot associations, NRA, political damage control experts and more. What did the brilliant scholars on talk radio have for research? The morning newspaper.

An old broadcaster who has since passed on once told me, "Don't worry about being popular, worry about being RIGHT! If you do that, it'll take care of itself sooner or later, I guarantee!"

Paul Gallo

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