News-Record.com

Yes pilots should carry guns. When I drive my car to the city of Greensboro I leagally carry my 9mm pistol. You have to with the crime rate on the rise and all of the gangs and thugs in Greensboro. If you take away the right to carry firearms, the wannna-be thugs will still have their guns. They would love that situation, they could rob and steal with ease. We as a city need to stop these hip gangster wanna-be's from selling drugs and lowering the property value in certain hoods.

We think increased security on airplanes is good, even though unfortunate for the society at large.

Obviously, in this specific case, some attention to physical equipment design and management of the arms by personnel needs addressing and perhaps changing.

We also believe the presence of arms on an airplane significantly increases the responsibility of the airline and Homeland Security personnel to evaluate personnel authorized to carry a weapon and in many cases to deny this dual authorization to certain employees! We have been neighbor to a pilot who might be or have been a fine airline pilot but who also has no business, in our opinion, of having access to a gun in the public domain! We suspect he is not alone and that there are many fine pilots and stewardesses who are excellent at their job but do not have the tempermant and other skills necessary to also bear arms in a public situation!

Of course, we are sure there are a number of employees who do have all the skills to be both excellent pilots, stewardesses and other members of the airline team and also the tempermant and skill to be excellent to represent Homeland Security by bearing an armed weapon!

Mental tempermant to bear arms as well as to pilot a plane can be a changing engima due to stress and/or disease and therefore must be managed and not guaranteed by the airline or Homeland security!! For some it was never present!

I'll take my chances with an armed pilot any day.One incident does not an epidemic make. I saw a video of an observing officer accidentally discharging a firearm during an arrest, nearly striking the arresting officer and suspect. This kind of incident, while being extremely unfortunate, does not make me any more fearful of pilots than it does of law enforcement officers.

Anyone, pilot, crew, or passenger holding a CCW permit should be allowed to be armed.
Had there been a few weapons aboard airliners on Sept 11, 2001 there would have been dead terrorists and no dead Americans.