The House of Representatives yesterday passed a bill to permit pilots to carry guns in the cockpits of commercial airliners. Unfortunately, the bill faces opposition from Senator Hollings, chairman of the Commerce Committee, as well as from the Bush administration. So far, the line from the opposition has been that pilots should be focused on flying the plane in the event of an emergency, and that an errant bullet could kill a passenger or knock out a critical system. These concerns are chimerical. The most obvious counterargument is to think of the difference it could have made if the pilots leaving Logan and Dulles last September had been armed instead of defenseless. Furthermore, pilots, on top of rigorous firearms training, which would reduce the likelihood of a misfire (many pilots are ex-military anyway), could possibly be armed with prefragmented ammunition that would be less likely to damage the already redundant electrical and hydraulic systems.

We understand that some, such as the head of the Transportation Security Administration, John Magaw, who has opposed guns in the cockpit, are hamstrung by a bureaucratic mentality. It’s better for all pilots to be vulnerable, the thinking seems to go, than for a single dead or injured passenger to be laid at one’s feet. Politically, the Senate and the president have to deal with America’s, or at least the coastal elite’s, squeamishness regarding anything that relates to guns. That squeamishness, though, may be a thing of the past. When only 2% of flights have an armed air marshal on board, and while screeners at 32 of the nation’s largest airports have missed almost 25% of all fake weapons in undercover tests, Americans are not likely to fail to appreciate the need for another line of defense before they face being shot out of the sky by F-16s. The culture of passivity in America died the day we realized we would have to defend ourselves. It’s time for our government to get serious and adjust.