False security

A San Francisco television station reported last week that a national guardsman, patrolling the international airport, shot himself in the butt with his 9-mm sidearm.

Now, for the life of me, I’ve been trying to imagine how a trained soldier shoots himself in the butt with his own weapon in a crowded civilian airport.

Here are the details, as provided by KRON, Channel 4, in San Francisco:

As he was going off duty, the guardsman was about to unload his weapon. According to his superiors, the safety procedure calls for the soldiers to fire into a red barrel filled with sand in an effort to “clear the chamber.”

Non-commissioned officers then inspect the chambers of the weapons to ensure they are clear.

But this soldier had difficulty removing his sidearm from his holster. There was a live round in the chamber. Somehow, as he was struggling with himself, the gun went off and the round hit him in the butt.

Lt. Robert Paoletti explains that the guardsman is “a good soldier that had an accident. He is trained in the weapon. He is qualified in the weapon, so it’s an unfortunate thing.”

Now, I don’t claim to be a firearms expert, but I’ve got to tell you that this explanation doesn’t hold water.

1. The National Guard’s procedures on clearing the weapon are worrisome. It sounds like a plan for idiots who don’t know how to use their guns. The safe way to clear a semi-automatic handgun is to release the magazine from the grip, hand cycle the weapon to force any in-chamber cartridge to be ejected, pull back the slide to visually inspect the magazine space to confirm the chamber is clear. You never place your finger on the trigger in this process.

2. When a semi-automatic firearm is not in use, the safety should be engaged. For an accident like this to have occurred, it would seem the soldier also forgot to follow this simple procedure.

Now, a soldier who shoots himself in the butt when he is simply trying to remove his gun from his holster is not likely to be a real asset in the event of an emergency. If terrorists attacked the airport, do you think he would be more or less likely to make a mistake of this kind – when there’s real stress involved? How long do you think it would take him to get his gun out of his holster when he’s under fire?

But, of course, his superiors will make the case that his training is top-notch. After all, they are responsible for his training.

I don’t blame the soldier. I blame his superiors for the poor training and for the misguided safety procedures. I also blame the federal decision to place national guardsmen at the airports as a security measure. America can and must do better than this.

I’ve said it before and I will keep on saying it until this country wakes up. If we can trust pilots to command a commercial airliner, we can trust them to be armed.

The pilots want the guns. It is Congress that is blocking this logical measure.

This is a much better solution to airline hijackings than stationing national guardsmen at the airports. This is an extremely labor intensive solution to a problem. It may make people feel better when they walk into an airport. But it does not measurably increase security at all.

In fact, as we have seen, we already have one casualty of this new policy. It didn’t get much attention outside of San Francisco, but there will be other “accidents” like this in the future if such ridiculous policies are maintained for any length of time.

Do we want to solve the security problems we have at airports? Or do we just want to make each other feel like we have solved them?

The first thing we need to do is get firearms in the hands of the crew on airliners. We should train them in their use and give them the proper ammunition. Give them instructions in self-defense.

That simple plan would allow the guardsmen to get back to work more appropriate to their training. They are not policemen. And the day we turn guardsmen into permanent policemen is the day we turn America into a police state.