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.It's not clear whether pilots who are currently permitted to keep and bear arms in the cockpit will be stripped of their weapons (though it wouldn't surprise me...) but it is clear that by cutting funding to the training program, our articulate and clean Teleprompter-Reader in Chief is going to prevent future pilots from arming themselves in order to maximize their ability to protect passengers.
Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.
The Obama administration this past week diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program to hire more supervisory staff, who will engage in field inspections of pilots.
(h/t: Ace, who poses an important question: "If you don't trust a pilot to carry a gun, what the fuck are you doing allowing him at the controls of a plane carrying 300 people?")
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