A message to my fellow countrymen.
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"Since more American members of our subject pilot group have received official training in firearm use, have experience in hunting, have family exposure to firearms, ...
Boing"
By "family exposure" Boing, I suppose you do not refer to the heavily armed gentlemen that walk into family restaurants and vent their deranged anger in the form of multiple rounds per minute, or perhaps, God forbid, to the high-school children that borrow Mom & Dad's semi-automatic corner-store weapon plus a clip or two to settle teenage scores with the peer group.
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"The bottom line is that if they make it into the cockpit, all of this is for naught...
Tripower455"
Surely, Tripower, the solution lies in preventing access to the cockpit in the first place.
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"gun-hating, pinko, liberal European wimp who has never seen or handled a gun in his life...
Covenant"
Pardon me? I am sure you do not wish to be seen as exactly that, Covenant, but somewhat carelessly paraphrased, no doubt, from one of the many educated and illuminatingly profound speeches given by NRA spokesman of note Charleton Heston. That very famous person acquired his initial fame in "Planet of the Apes", and if the rest of us are to be given a reasonable chance at continued survival, that is most squarely where he must remain.
I am appalled by the trigger-happy nature of this exchange, and wonder why our European brothers haven't reacted strongly to this thread. The body-bag count is already horrifically high, and increasing in leaps and bounds by each and every blood-thirsty day. If you truly wish to wield the weapon of your fondest desires, I believe the FAA is in the process of recruiting Air Marshals.
We, as a professional group, have miserably failed the world at large by not performing due diligence in anticipating the unspeakably rapacious obscenities of the 11th. And for that, my friends, we shall not be forgiven any time soon. So, let's get on with it, put the penis multiplier away, let's leave that to those that are trained for it, our business is to get the wives, kids, fathers and mothers safely from A to B. We have a fair bit of work to do.