The points that most of the anti-gun (mostly european) people are missing are;
No crewmember is going to be forced to carry or use a firearm. If a person wishes to be selected to carry a firearm they should be prepared to initially train and then attend recurrent training at their own time and expense.
The selection and training procedure for personnel wishing to be armed should be the same as for the sky marshals. Since not many people are objecting to sky marshals why should one object to a similarly selected and trained pilot. To ease the legalities such as firearm possession on layovers etc. the person should be sworn in as a deputy sky marshal. A whole host of federally approved personnel are allowed to legally carry their firearm around the country, why not selected pilots.
Issued firearms in this country are no big deal. Nearly every shopping mall car park has its armed security late at night. Many banks have armed security. There are various armed federal employees all over the place, immigration, drug-enforcement, fish and wildlife rangers, not to mention hundreds of different state and local government employees down to the lowest level.
This is a firearm oriented country. Many, many people feel perfectly comfortable with firearms. Millions of people hunt one quarry or another. Many people target shoot every weekend. Many of these fire literally hundreds of rounds every weekend. I know from personal experience that many members of the pistol section of the gun club to which I belong regularly outshoot the normal police officers. (The basic training groups - not the keen pistol shooters who happen to be police officers).
Firearms could not be taken by pilots on international flights but the fact that there are a number of armed pilots would reduce the number of sky marshals required on domestic flights. These sky marshals would then be able to cover more international flights.
I have been aproached by many passengers who have told me they think the pilots should be armed.
BY THE WAY. The US government approved of shooting down commercial aircraft that appear to have been hijacked. Note they did not say "US AIRCRAFT", just aircraft. It is going to be a weird feeling as you drive your aircraft towards New York with the hijacker sitting behind you waiting for the missile to hit. Bet, at that point, you will wish you had been able to do something to stop your imminent death - like fighting back and shooting the hijacker.
[ 28 September 2001: Message edited by: BOING ]