Washington has done
a startling and politically gutless turnabout on guns in the cockpit. Only last
spring nearly everyone involved in regulating airline safety thought the idea of
giving guns to pilots was a desperate, potentially calamitous way to prevent
hijackings. Now many of the same people are stampeding in the opposite
direction, spurred on by the National Rifle Association. On Thursday the Senate
was swept along by the tide, voting 87 to 6 to arm pilots in a
trial program. The House passed a similar measure in July.
There are two plausible explanations for this baffling change of
sentiment, both alarming. Either Congress and the administration have become so
complacent about security a year after the Sept. 11 terror attacks that they are
now willing to play politics on a serious security issue by succumbing to the
powerful gun lobby, or they have become so unsure of their ability to carry out
their own program for protecting the flying public that they are giving up and
accepting a reckless alternative.
President Bush must
assert leadership here, and reassure travelers that neither politics nor a sense
of helplessness has overtaken the federal effort to secure the skies. He should
veto the gun measure if it reaches his desk. The reasons that his administration
initially opposed arming pilots are still sound.
The
new Transportation Security Administration has given critics reason to question
its ability to meet the ambitious deadlines set by Congress for installing new
passenger screeners and bomb-detecting machines at airports. A program to arm up
to 70,000 commercial pilots would only create more disarray. The aim of the
whole aviation security effort is to keep weapons off aircraft, except for guns
carried by undercover air marshals, and to seal off cockpits altogether.
Airlines have already installed locking metal bars on cockpit doors and face an
April deadline for providing impregnable, bulletproof compartments.
Expecting pilots to engage in gunplay while trying to keep
their aircraft on course, and announcing to all the world that there will be
guns in the cockpit that could be commandeered, is not a sensible
counterterrorist strategy.
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