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(CNSNews.com)-A Second Amendment group is blasting the Obama administration for quietly seeking to end the program that allows pilots-after special training-to carry guns in the cockpit. The move will make air travel more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, something that should outrage travelers, said the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) said. In an editorial on Tuesday, The Washington Times noted that the administration recently diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program. Instead, the money will be used to hired more supervisors to conduct field inspections of pilots, the Times reported. “This looks like completely unnecessary harassment of the pilots,” the newspaper opined. CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb agreed that the Obama administration is “risking public safety, as the newspaper put it, 'in the name of an anti-gun ideology.'""How dare the president, or anybody in his administration, take measures to erode the safety of air travelers?" Gottlieb asked."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.”Gottlieb noted that some politicians and bureaucrats have never liked the armed pilot program:"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."According to the Air Line Pilots Association, the government-since April 2003-has trained thousands of volunteer airline pilots as federal flight deck officers to protect passenger and cargo aircraft flying throughout the United States.“The FFDO program has evolved from a small program that armed airline pilots to protect the flight deck into a substantial, cost-effective security institution,” ALPA says on its Web site. The pilots’ union repeatedly has urged Congress to adequately fund the program, and its priorities for 2009 include bolstering the program. Federal Flight Deck Officers are trained by the Federal Air Marshal Service on the use of firearms, use of force, legal issues, defensive tactics, the psychology of survival and program standard operating procedures, the Transportation Security Administration says on its Web site. An application for pilots wishing to arm themselves in the cockpit is still available online at the TSA.By Susan Jones, Senior Editor
As in the days of Noah...
