Easy Targets
The extraordinary events of September 11, 2001 require a serious look at the policies that made these horrific events possible. It is now obvious that we should stop treating hijackings as hostage situations and start treating them like terrorist attacks.
We can all see clearly now that airliners are weapons, not merely conveyances. Hijackers must therefore be prevented from gaining control of an aircraft no matter what the cost. We should turn airliner cockpits into hardened, secure areas where no one can forcefully gain entry without bringing down the aircraft. At the same time, our policy should be one of no capitulation. It should be our policy to permit any number of passenger/hostages to be killed rather than allow access to the cockpit area under duress. As we have now seen, the consequences of turning an aircraft over to hijackers are too horrific to do otherwise.
Like many others on September 11, before all air traffic was grounded, I wondered “Would they really shoot down a civilian airliner full of innocent passengers to prevent it from crashing into another building?” This is a choice we can avoid, as a nation, only by deciding right now, and sending notice to all, that, yes, we would sacrifice an entire planeload of passengers and crew to avoid potentially even more deaths.
As I write this, it is all but certain that some passengers of United flight 93, the one that went down in rural Pennsylvania, short of its intended target, were faced with a similar question to which the answer was obvious, if not an easy one to make. They were aware of the World Trade Center crashes and doubtless suspected that they faced a similar fate.
Faced with a tough decision, it is highly probable that the passengers and crew attempted to regain control of the aircraft and that, as a result, flight 93 did not reach its target. We have no way of knowing how many lives were saved by the heroic actions of the people on flight 93. They should be commended and honored.
At the same time, we have to ask, how and why did we become such easy targets? Does it really take a life-and-death situation to move Americans to action? When did we decide to become sitting ducks?
Sitting Ducks
We’re all sitting ducks. It’s our national policy. Crazy as it seems, your government(s), federal, state and local, believe that you are safer if you are kept defenseless. Let’s examine this “sitting duck” pathology in more detail.
It is assumed, and we are often told, that we are not able to look out for ourselves. Only trained professionals should confront aggressors. We “civilians” should just cooperate with the attacker, lest we anger and provoke him/them into harming us. There is nothing worse, so it is said, than someone getting hurt.
Government prefers that you remain defenseless in order to protect you. They think that you are safer when you are disarmed. To a large degree, the law requires that we be sitting ducks. This is loony.
I ask you, when some crazy man drove his pickup truck into a Luby’s cafeteria in Kileen, Texas and walked around casually executing people with a gun, were the Luby’s patrons safer for being unarmed? When a racist madman shot up a Long Island commuter train, were the commuters safer because they could not shoot back?
Time after time, officials wring their hands and bemoan the fact that the perpetrator had a gun. They never fret that no one else was armed and able to shoot back. Yet, in the vast majority of these mass-murder cases, had the potential victims not been disarmed — sitting ducks — the death toll would have been much lower.
At least one Luby’s patron had left her gun in the car — in accordance with Texas law — and as a result, had to see her parents murdered while she was helpless to do anything about it. It took 20 minutes for the police to show up and stop the slaughter.
Who on that Long Island commuter train wouldn’t have appreciated having a “Bernard Goetz” aboard that day, armed and willing to fight back? None came forward, so the mass-murderer was able to expend all of his ammunition — 100 rounds — and only then were the commuters able to subdue him. The laws that said they must be unarmed placed those commuters in greater danger, not less, and the law certainly didn’t deter the nutcase from his murderous rampage. Laws against carrying guns never bother the nut-cases. Only good, honest people comply with these laws.
Now we come back to the events of September 11, 2001. Were the passengers on four hijacked transcontinental flights safer for having been rendered disarmed and helpless? Absolutely not. Yet government’s reaction to the hijackings and subsequent events is to further disarm passengers. Airline “security” personnel are now confiscating nail trimmers and cuticle scissors, fer cryin’ out loud! Do they seriously think that this will thwart a determined hijacker?
Practically anything can be used as a weapon. The sharpened end of a toothbrush handle would make a great puncturing weapon. In a pinch, a shirtsleeve could be used to strangle. People have used cayenne pepper as a weapon, not pepper spray, just the stuff from the seasoning section at the supermarket.
Persons intent on threatening or injuring others will always find a way. What are we as a country going to do about it?
Government’s prescription is to render us even more helpless. Of course, this makes us “feel” safe. Had you polled airline passengers on September 10, the vast majority would have reported that air travel was safe — the metal and explosives detectors provide the illusion of safety from certain dangers. But feeling safe and actually being safe are two very different things, as we learned on September 11.
Air travelers are now burdened with even more onerous restrictions and are reporting that the new impositions make them feel safe again. But it is still an illusion. Safety cannot be achieved by making us even more vulnerable.
A finger poked into an eye will maim for life. Bones are easily enough broken with your bare hands. Short of restraining each person in a straight jacket and tying them into their seats, can any number of new “security” restrictions create actual safety from those determined to harm others?
I say it’s time for a change in policy, a change in attitude. We need to reverse the trends in government that discourage and even forbid fighting back. Rather than rendering air travelers helpless, why not empower them to defend themselves?
Crank up your imaginations and ponder this: What would have happened if everyone on the hijacked airliners — crew, passengers, even hijackers — had been armed with guns? Could the death toll possibly have been any worse? I doubt it. More likely, knowing that they were seriously out-numbered by passengers with guns, the hijackings would never have happened. When mass murders and nut cases seek to kill lots of people, they don’t trot down to the local police station. They look for places where people will be disarmed — sitting ducks. And government provides lots of places where mass shootings are enabled, where targets are plentiful and disarmed.
Belatedly, government recognizes the advantage of bearing arms for defense of airliners but they want to employ “sky marshals” — who would have been outnumbered in the recent hijackings — or they want to arm the pilots, who really ought to be flying the plane, not having to shoot it out with hijackers.
Lawmakers think that disarming us makes society “safer.” They believe this because government has a very low opinion of you. Government believes that you can’t be trusted with weapons, that We the People are irresponsible. Your government believes that you are the enemy. You’ve heard the rhetoric. If we’re armed, blood will run in the streets. Every traffic altercation will result in a shooting, so they say, despite empirical evidence to the contrary.
It is no coincidence that where the laws most restrict self defense (“anti-gun laws” are actually anti-self-defense laws), crime is worst. Yet again and again, government ignores the effects of their policy prescriptions and gives us more of the same — as they are doing now in response the hijackings. To defend against the next hijackings, passengers will have to use what… plastic spoons?
I used to work in an industrial environment where worker safety was a constant concern. One memorable safety poster said “You’re looking at the one most responsible for your safety.” This was accompanied by a patch of silver foil, a low-grade mirror. The message was clear: Each of us is the one most responsible for our own personal safety.
If, as government officials profess, they really have your best interests — your safety — in mind, you’d think that public policy would be based on what actually works. They should be asking: What actually reduces crime? What really saves lives? Instead, we get public policy based on Wishful Thinking. We wish people would be nice to one another. We hope that banning weapons will render people incapable of violence. In fact, the opposite happens. Disarming us only emboldens those who would prey on us.
Apparently, America is willing to sacrifice the occasional airliner or World Trade Center as the price of feeling safe. The additional murders, rapes and assaults that occur in jurisdictions where citizens cannot bear arms for defense are of no great consequence to legislators and regulators. Even the loss of six thousand lives in one day of terrorism can’t seem to shake the almost religious belief that we are better off if we are not equipped to protect ourselves.
Yet, it’s simple common sense: if you were about to commit a criminal act, would you want to encounter armed opposition?
Much government policy is born of the attitude that “violence is bad.” Unfortunately, they consider self-defense — fighting back — to be just as bad as the aggressor’s initial violent act. This has given rise, in some jurisdictions, to laws that essentially require you to surrender everything to an aggressor and defend yourself only as a last resort. We are expected to meekly accept our victimization so as to minimize “violence.” Loony.
Crazier still that we citizens go along with it.