BlogWonks

The lamestream media told you:

A US Airways pilot’s gun discharged in the cockpit on Tue., March 25. No details were immediately available on how or why the gun fired, where the bullet went, who exactly is going to investigate what or for how long and which of six competing government agencies got notified in what order after the event was over, but at least no one was hurt according to official reports. The passengers were apparently unaware of the incident. It’s the first time a gun went off accidentally under the federal armed pilots program, now five years old.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

After several years of delays in implementing the “armed pilots” program, the federal government decided it couldn’t trust people who fly planes with hundreds of people on board to carry firearms, even though most commercial pilots are former military officers.

Instead, they came up with a scheme, finally enacted, in which pilots would be certified as “Federal Flight Deck Officers,” and the federal officers could then be armed. A person is only an FFDO while on the flight deck, formerly known as the cockpit, and can only possess the firearm there, a jurisdiction of several square feet, probably the smallest in the world. The idea that “pilots are now armed” is just inaccurate enough to bother the Uninvited Ombudsman, who critics say is very picky.

The incident confirms that the wild fears of explosive decompression and downed aircraft, completely debunked during tests and hearings, were baloney. A shot right through the fuselage of a jumbo jet “makes a whistling noise” according to the experts. That’s it. The Goldfinger movie, which prompted many of the ungrounded fears, was a movie.

Airplanes already have gaping holes designed into them to allow fresh air in and stale air out, so passengers can breathe. Later reports indicated the .40 caliber round from the H&K pierced the fuselage on the pilot’s side at about 8,000 feet over Charlotte, NC. Location of the spent round is unknown.

A commercial pilot, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized “insane” policies of the TSA, and guessed the discharge might have something to do with the massive 4-tumbler-and-key brass lock TSA requires through the trigger guard of the firearm.