Obama Covertly Closing Down Armed Airline Pilot Program

Barack Obama, who seems to me more and more to resemble Jimmy Carter with a tan, is stealthily trying to terminate the program permitting commercial airline pilots to carry handguns begun in April of 2003 by diverting $2 million from the qualification training program to hire “supervisory” staff, whose job, it appears, will be to harass armed pilots through unnecessary field inspections.

The Washington Times has an editorial.

And Kim Priestap, at Wizbang, remarks:

Every time I turn around I read about a new, irrational, idiotic, incompetent, and harmful program that Barack Obama wants to implement.

Alan Gottlieb, at Citizens’ Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, responded with well-justified indignation:

How dare the president, or anybody in his administration, take measures to erode the safety of air travelers,” Gottlieb questioned. “The armed pilot program provides a guaranteed level of security to the public. There may or may not be an air marshal aboard every airplane, but there is definitely a pilot in the cockpit.

“We trust commercial airline pilots with $500 million aircraft,” he continued. “We can certainly trust them with $500 pistols to defend those planes, and the lives of their passengers.

“Certain individuals have never liked the armed pilot program,” Gottlieb acknowledged. “These anti-gun, anti-self-defense bureaucrats seem more interested in their own power, and protecting their little empires, than they are in protecting the public. And now, Obama is catering to their anti-gun bigotry.”