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As president Bush unveiled a plan to tighten airline security,
ranging from employing the National Guard at airports to placing more
marshals on flights. Those are important steps, but they won’t be
enough, especially since no one knows where the terrorists will strike
next. The only adequate response is to encourage more ordinary,
responsible citizens to carry guns.
Screening at airports, while important, will always be inadequate;
terrorists will always figure some way to circumvent the controls--for
instance, by bribing airport employees. Strengthening cockpit doors is
probably a good idea, but given current airline design it may create
dangerous differences in air pressure between the cockpit and cabin. In
any case, the door must be opened sometime, to allow pilots to go to
the bathroom or get food.
Fears of having guns on planes are misplaced. The special,
high-velocity handgun ammunition used on planes packs quite a wallop
but is designed not to penetrate the aluminum skin of the plane. Even
with regular bullets, the worst-case outcome would simply be to force
the plane to fly at a lower altitude, where the air pressure is higher.
The use of guns to stop terrorists shouldn’t be limited to
airplanes. We should encourage off-duty police, and responsible
citizens, to carry guns in most public places. Cops can’t be everywhere.
Thirty-three states currently have “right-to-carry” laws, which
allow the law-abiding to obtain a permit if they are above a certain
age and pay a fee. Half of these states require some training. We
should encourage more states to pass such law, and possibly even
subsidize firearms training.
States that pass concealed handgun laws experience drops in violent
crimes, especially in multiple victim shootings--the type of attack
most associated with terrorism. I found that deaths and injuries from
multiple-victim public shootings fell by 80% after states passed
right-to-carry laws.
Passing right-to-carry laws might even deter terrorist attacks.
True, some terrorists are suicidal, but they still want to cause
maximum carnage. They know the “return” on their terrorism would
rapidly diminish to the vanishing point if faced with gun-wielding
“victims.”
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