Why your child is safer in a plane than in school

There hasn’t been a hijacking of a commercial American aircraft since the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, even as hijacking continue around the world.

There could be a multitude of reasons for this success including stronger cockpit doors and tougher TSA screening, or at least the illusion of tougher TSA screenings. Apparently, most hijackers just can’t afford to wait in lines that long.

Another reason could be the Federal Air Marshal (FAM) program where an armed marshal, or two because they often work in pairs, fly undercover amongst the passengers.

On September 11, 2001, we had a whopping 50 air marshal positions on the federal payroll. Today we have between 3,500 and 4,000 of them to police some 30,000 commercial U.S. flights a day. Is that enough? According to their union boss, “If you were to attempt to place a team of just two FAMS on each flight, it would require an agency of over 75,000 FAMS.”

Fortunately, potential bad guys have other armed personnel on planes to worry about, Federal Flight Deck Officers (FFDO). These are deputies of the Federal Air Marshal Service, but they don’t sit undercover with the passengers. They sit in the cockpit. They’re pilots.

Flight crew members who wish to volunteer for the program must go through a careful background screening, not just a background check, to make sure they would be a good fit. If selected, it’s off to a center in New Mexico for a week of intensive training on how to handle a bad situation in an aircraft including arms training, hand-tohand combat and first aid. Upon graduation they are issued a gun with a special locking case and a badge. They are required to take continual refresher training.

Their only jurisdiction is onboard an airplane, a very specific and particular situation for which they’re trained. The exact number of FFDO’S is classified but is thought to be about one-in-ten pilots.

By all measurements this program has been an extraordinary success. Hijackers go elsewhere. And in the 15 years pilots have been packing heat no passenger has been killed by a pilot going off his nut. No passenger has taken the gun and caused havoc. I’m guessing most passengers haven’t been bothered at all that 10 percent of pilots have gone through all this trouble to make them safer.

So, if a program like this has made our skies safer, why couldn’t a similar program make our schools safer?

Or are our kids only worth protecting this way when they’re paying airline passengers.

The recent shooting in Santa Fe High School in Texas showed that all the “reasonable, common-sense” gun control being hyped wouldn’t have done a thing to protect those kids. Banning “high capacity magazines” and black guns that look mean, or raising the age to buy a gun to 21 wouldn’t have stopped a disturbed, 17-year-old kid from taking his dad’s shotgun (which isn’t a scary black gun) and revolver (which doesn’t use magazines) and committing mass murder.

But perhaps a trained person with a gun would have stopped him. While the media doesn’t celebrate it, that’s just what happened in March when an armed school resource officer shot a school shooter (another 17-yearold with a handgun, not an “assault rifle”) in Maryland, saving who knows how many lives.

Numerous schools in Colorado aren’t waiting. They’re doing something to protect our kids right now. There are armed teachers protecting our kids in (mostly rural) school districts and charter schools that allow it.

To assist in the cause Coloradans for Civil Liberties is providing free training to teachers called FASTER – Faculty Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response. The FASTER you stop the shooter, the FASTER you stop the bleeding, the more lives you save.

For the same reason we can’t afford air marshals on every flight, we can’t afford enough cops in every school.

Sooner or later, with or without “common sense” gun control, we will be forced into the hard realization that the only way to protect our children is to have highly trained, armed people in our schools. And the only way that is going to be practicable is to allow school staff who are willing and qualified to do it.

The Federal Flight Deck Officers program shows it works. What the hell are we waiting for? Why doesn’t YOUR school district allow it?