Ok, just for the sake of argument, let me adopt the prevailing opinion here that those with CCWs ought to be allowed to carry onboard a plane. Say we've found a way to verify the CCW credentials, and perhaps we've decided on what an appropriate level of extra training would be and we also have a way to ensure this requirement has been met. Say we've also set standards on what weapons/ammo are appropriate and have had some sort of inspection to verify the same. The airlines are OK with this, and obviously the government has bought off on it. [Although, interestingly, nobody has addressed what to do about terrorists posing as CCWers.]
So, let's invent some hypothetical guy who senses a market opportunity here. He sees that those with CCWs
want to fly armed--it makes them feel safer. So to get a leg up on his competition this guy comes up with the following marketing plan...
Let's start up a new airline where we not only allow private citizens to carry guns onboard, but we encourage it. Let's call our airline
HK Airlines. And as a marketing campaign, and in the further interest of making this airline the least-likely terrorist target in the sky, we'll allow our CCW-fliers to not only carry their personal weapons onboard, but as a reward/incentive to our best and most frequent CCW-fliers, we'll check out to each a
MP-5 complete with two extra magazines. Fly a million miles with us and we won't just give you some lame ticket to Hawaii...Hell, we'll let you take one home.
So the opinion of many here would be that this airline ought to have great success with this plan.
However, I'm of the opinion that most of us would soon find ourselves using other travel options. You see, it wouldn't necessarily be
one of these guys who'd you be likely to sit next to, but rather
one of these two. You'll notice that they look a little "twitchy" and one of them can't keep their damned fingers off the trigger. You'll get tired of wondering if
this woman has quite enough on her plate with her two kids, much less an automatic weapon on her lap. And then there'd surely be
one of these old guys who has felt the need to tell (and re-tell) his Korean War war stories, but (except for that 5 hour CCW course) hasn't handled a gun much since then. None of them will exactly inspire much confidence.
Now it's not that I doubt these peoples' earnestness in wanting to help out should another terrorist group attempt to take down another plane. In fact I applaud it. But I hope that the above examples show that putting an automatic weapon in the hands of these earnest, but, at best, minimially trained hands is a mistake. Similarly, it is a mistake to allow the
average CCW holder to bring their weapons on a plane. I doubt that many of us short of Rob Leatham can snap off an accurate 25-30 yard shot in the time that will be available for it. And let's not forget that by letting my examples above carry onboard, you open yourself up to letting
one of these guys on too.
As much as it makes us feel naked and unprotected in the cabin of an aircraft, I think we're all better off if we let the pro's handle this.