Obama secretly ends program that let pilots carry guns: "After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings. Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology. The Obama administration this past week diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program to hire more supervisory staff, who will engage in field inspections of pilots. This looks like completely unnecessary harassment of the pilots. The 12,000 Federal Flight Deck Officers, the pilots who have been approved to carry guns, are reported to have the best behavior of any federal law enforcement agency. There are no cases where any of them has improperly brandished or used a gun. There are just a few cases where officers have improperly used their IDs. Fewer than one percent of the officers have any administrative actions brought against them and, we are told, virtually all of those cases "are trumped up."


TN: Fingerprinting for gun owners could come to an end : "A 1998 state law that requires gun buyers to provide a fingerprint could soon be a thing of the past. A bill that passed 82-11 in the State House is now headed for the Senate. It says firearms dealers in Tennessee would no longer be required to take thumbprints from people buying a gun. . Although thumb printing is required, it's not part of TBI's background check for a gun purchase. The dealer calls in the information provided by the potential buyer."


One more hoop for you: ""A recent article by the Portland Progressive Examiner unwittingly illustrates an underappreciated problem with the concept of the concealed weapons permit: privacy, not from the government, but from the public. Prospective applicants' apprehensions about privacy from the government - the whole `why on earth would I volunteer to be on a government list?' problem - is well-understood and generally self-articulating. But how about this problem: what happens when someone decides (usually post facto and unilaterally, such as the judge in this case) that the records are suddenly public domain? It was almost certainly not the intention of the author to talk seriously about this topic, but his commenters did not let him get away with the rather standard-issue, thinly veiled contempt that most `progressives' seem to have for what I like to call `enforceable individual sovereignty.'"


Why people carry guns : "Most people who choose to carry a firearm for self defense will, sooner or later, have someone ask them the question, `why do you carry a gun?' Sometimes it will be asked accusingly by an anti-gun person seeking to ridicule them. Other times it will be by someone who has been lead to believe that guns are bad and the people who carry them are, but they're not really sure and are genuinely curious. . The anti-gun crowd will tell you it is because of paranoia or that [gun owners] want to feel big and powerful. I've never found either to be the case. For most, it is because they want to feel safe."