Accidental Gunshot in Cockpit

Excuse me. "Cockpit" is out, "flight deck" is in. Sexism, you know.

The accidental discharge of the pilot's pistol was inevitable, and it's all because of the stupid government rules Federal Flight Deck Officers labor under.

As soon as I heard of the incident, I knew what had happened. I refrain from speculation normally, especially when I have no information other than news reports. (News reports are almost guaranteed to get it wrong on any story involving firearms or airplanes.) But this time, I would have bet a year's salary on what had happened.

I am not an FFDO. I considered volunteering when the program was developed, but I did not because I could not accept the restriction that let to this accident. Because I am not an FFDO, I will talk about a couple of issues that I would probably not be able to if I were an armed flight crew member.

People who do not routinely carry guns can't imagine that those who do are not conscious of the gun every second of the day. But those who carry guns are little more conscious of them than you are of your watch, your pen, your Blackberry, or your cell phone. People who put on their guns in the morning and take them off at night have accidents with their guns extremely rarely.

Guns do not go off when they are not being handled. I'll say this again:
Guns do not go off when they are not being handled.

The gun pilots carry is extremely safe mechanically. I have one, and I am impressed with it's safety and reliability. The only way this gun will fire is if the trigger is pulled a l-o-n-g distance. So what's the chance of accidental discharge? Absolutely zero, unless the gun is being handled.

Law enforcement officers do not normally put on and take off their guns several times during a duty day. When they do, accidents happen, most frequently something as simple as leaving the gun in a toilet stall. But FFDOs are not trusted by our government to have their guns on their persons all the time.

I won't go into specifics, but your armed pilot must strap his gun on and take it off several times during the course of his duty day. He or she is not allowed to carry the gun on his or her person except in extremely limited circumstances.

When I learned that the pilot's gun went off while the airplane was on approach for landing, I knew with moral certainty what had happened and emailed a pilot friend to that effect. A few minutes later, I saw the news story confirming my suspicion. The pilot, wearing the gun in a holster on his belt during the flight, was removing it from his person and stowing it in a specific piece of luggage as required by regulation. (We can't have these folks carrying a gun on their belts outside the airplane, after all.) He could have waited until after landing, but flight crews are busy after landing, especially if it's the last landing of their day.

Stowing the gun before landing is not an unreasonable thing to do. What is unreasonable, and stupid, is having to stow it at all.

Private citizens in most states, with a modicum of training (or with no training in some states), can carry a concealed weapon almost anywhere. Armed pilots, who have gone through rigorous training and who are, in effect, federal law enforcement officers, can not. Because of this restriction, they have to handle their guns far more than necessary, and, when handling guns, whether by ignorant children or by trained law enforcement officers, accidents will happen.

This required but unnecessary (and inherently unsafe) extra gun handling is one of the reasons I never applied to become an FFDO.

I hope they don't hang the guy whose gun went off. They should hang the jerks who wrote the stupid rules instead.

Mutual Endorsements: Obama and Richardson

It was difficult to tell who was endorsing whom with more enthusiasm.

Governor Richardson was fervent in his testimonial for Senator Obama's candidacy, but Obama's following speech was not just thanks to Richardson, but an equally enthusiastic appraisal of the Governor's qualifications for the vice-presidency.

Obama needs someone exactly like Bill Richardson on the ticket with him. In his response to Richardson's endorsement, Obama let those who bemoan his lack of experience know that they can rest easy on that score. Richardson's experience complements Obama's vision.

Clinton/Obama Ticket? Bad Idea

Regardless of who is the top and who the bottom, running those two on the same ticket would probably lose to McCain or to anybody else.

Bill Clinton and others who think the pair would be unbeatable are looking at it from the wrong angle in thinking that it would bring in all the voters who like either one.

There is a group of people who will not vote for a woman and there is another group who will not vote for a black. To some degree, the groups overlap, but the combination of both groups is larger than either one alone. If Obama and Clinton run together, they will push two groups of voters into voting Republican or staying home, not just one.

Either Clinton or Obama can probably beat a Republican this year, but if the GOP had not made itself so unpopular the past few years, it's unlikely that either one of them could overcome votes that will be lost automatically because of prejudice against sex or color.

Clinton or Obama can probably overcome McCain in November, but Clinton and Obama probably can't, not because of policy or personality, but because of numbers.

McCain/Clinton 2008?

Hillary Clinton is beginning to piss me off. She sounds as though she's sucking up to become John McCain's running mate. In equating her experience with McCain's and saying Obama has none, she's feeding McCain his lines for the coming presidential campaign should Obama beat her out for the nomination. It's as though she sees it as all Hillary or nothing for the Democrats. If she has any party loyalty, she's hiding it well.

While I favor Obama, I've considered Clinton an acceptable nominee if that is the will of the people. But it appears she is so tunnel-visioned on becoming President that she doesn't care about the will of the people or anything else.

Take Michigan and Florida. The DNC's warning to the states was clear: If you have your primaries early, the votes will not count and elected delegates will not be seated at the convention.

But Florida and Michigan had their primaries early and some people voted anyway. In Michigan, she was the only one on the ballot. Guess what. She won. But that didn't matter because she didn't need those states then. She does now.

And since she does need them, she now says the Party should accept the votes and the delegates. She first said that there should be do-overs, but nobody wants to pay for them. So now she wants to change the rules after the game is over and seat the delegates that were not campaigned for. I'll be surprised if she doesn't take the issue to court.

I'm getting tired of her claiming qualification to "answer the phone at 3:00 a.m." for no other reason than she used to live in the house where the phone is. If that's experience, I'll take Obama's judgment, thank you.

And then this from Keith Olberman on MSNBC. Remember that flap just before the Ohio and Texas primaries this week about someone on Obama's staff allegedly telling some Canadian officials not to worry about Obama going after NAFTA, that that was just campaign talk? That shook confidence in Obama as a straight shooter and caught him, for once, flat footed. Well, guess what? Clarification from the Canadians: It wasn't someone from Obama's people talking about Obama. It was somebody from Clinton's campaign reassuring them about Clinton's anti-NAFTA campaign position. And, according to Olberman, Clinton flatly denied it.

The only good that will come of the nastiness of this contest is, it should guarantee that neither Clinton nor Obama will invite the other to share the ticket. Those that think this would be a winning combination overlook an important consideration: There is a group that will not vote for a black and another group that will not vote for a woman. The two groups overlap to some degree, but the sum of the groups remains greater than either one alone. In this case, two negatives do not result in a positive in November, unless you are a Republican.

I've been arguing for a long time with an old and good friend who is almost irrational in his dislike of Hillary Clinton. I still think he's off base on the subject, but not as far off as I thought he was.

I just sent the Obama campaign another hundred dollars.