Grey Matters

I offer further evidence that words have lost their meanings.

Yesterday, on July 4th, 2002, I was reading up on wireless Internet technology. I came across the definition of FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum), a method of radio transmission. There I learned that the frequency of the transmission changes in a “… random but predictable sequence from frequency to frequency…” Random, yet predictable. Sure.

The author of this definition, and I, obviously, have very different understandings of “random”.

Later that night, following the local fireworks show, we were watching news coverage of fireworks shows throughout Arizona and the rest of the US. Invariably, the attendees were subjected to “the tightest security ever” on this, the first July 4th following September 11.

I was saddened to see, in venue after venue, people herded into long lines where they stoically inched past “security checkpoints” to be relieved of their backpacks and diaper bags, sheared of any pointed or potentially dangerous objects and fleeced of any remaining dignity. This was described as “… the indomitable American spirit.”

The news anchor, and I, obviously have very different understandings of “indomitable”.

Far from being indomitable, we have succumbed completely to fear of terrorism. Bin Laden has won. We, as a people, have been conquered completely by “security” concerns and are dominated by bureaucrats, politicians, legislators and public servants who insist, despite all evidence to the contrary (including 9-11) that we are safer if we are helpless and unable to defend ourselves.

“Indomitable?” Phooey. Not unless “indomitable” means “embracing complete and unconditional surrender”. Americans have shown that there is nothing they will not endure, no indignity, no inconvenience they will not suffer, to acquire the facade of safety and security. We may, of course, imagine that we are now safe, even as we imagined we were safe — right up through September 10, 2001.

Indeed, when air travel was resumed following 9/11, air travellers “felt” safer than ever before. No one that I saw, in TV interviews with returning air travellers, admitted to being put out at all by the new “security” arrangements. Interestingly, no one ever brought up the question of whether passengers were in fact actually safer at all. The questions and responses aired all dealt with whether they “felt” safe. Any politician will tell you that it’s more important for people to “feel” safe than to actually “be” safe.

About the only encouraging sign is that, according to the news, people are now willing to drive for as much as eight hours, rather than to fly commercially. The old number was four hours. Of course, this may not actually be a sign of persons, like myself, who refuse to submit to the indignities suffered by air travellers, so much as it is a practical matter; in many cases, I’m sure it is now faster to drive than to fly to a destination, given the long delays and time wasted at airports.

So, on Independence Day, 2002, the American people may celebrate independence from England but we are less independent than ever in other respects. We are more dependent than ever on government, to the point where we have abdicated even the defense of our persons to the state. For this privilege we pay a far larger portion of our incomes to Uncle Sam than ever demanded by the British Crown.

It would seem that people give very little thought to the words they read and hear, and even those they speak. “Random” means predictable, “indomitable” means surrender and “independence” means living in practically a police state.

I think I’ll go grab a Sam Adams and toast King George.

That the attacks of 9/11 were able to be successfully executed are being blamed on government’s failure — failure to interpret intelligence, failure of inter-agency cooperation, failure to keep known terrorists off the planes and more. But 9/11 was not so much a failure of intelligence as it was a failure of federal policy.

9/11 was just a balloon payment we made on the cost of gun control. The reality is this: where guns are most restricted, crime is highest. Where citizens right to bear arms is least restricted, crime is lowest. To the extent that government disarms citizens, we pay the cost in more violent crime. 

We’ve been making our annual payments: a few hundred extra murders, rapes, robberies and other assorted violent crimes in multiple major cities of the U.S. each year. 9/11 was just more of the same, but on a larger scale.

Those planes were hijacked and crashed because we’ve been indoctrinated to cooperate with hijackers (muggers, robbers and others violating us) so as not to anger them, lest anyone get hurt. Policy holds all life, even the lives of violent criminals assaulting us, as so precious that using deadly force to defend ourselves is itself mostly criminal. We’ve become so “civilized” that we dare not defend civil behavior or even civilization itself. And look what it’s gotten us. The barbarians rule us. We cower in our homes, afraid to walk the streets at night. 

Could 9/11 have possibly been any worse if everyone on those hijacked planes had been armed? Or even just everyone who wanted to be armed was? Those planes were hijacked and crashed because no one on them had guns with which to defend themselves. This is the result of the misbegotten policy of disarming people to make them ‘safer.’

We wouldn’t need security checkpoints and nail clipper confiscations if our right to bear arms was intact.

We’ve seen it in the movies — someone shoots a gun aboard an airliner and a vast, gaping hole opens up in the fuselage through which passengers are sucked out followed by seats ripped right out of the floor. It’s exciting to see in a James Bond film but it’s Phony Physics and no more realistic than Bond’s sportscar that turns into a submarine.

As an airliner ascends, cabin pressure is reduced from what it was on the ground to a pressure equivalent to that found at around 8000 feet altitude. At cruising altitude for an airliner, this will result in somewhere between 8 and 9 pounds per square inch of pressure differential between the cabin and the outside.

Would air get sucked out through a bullet-sized hole? Yes, but the explosive decompression so beloved by Hollywood action movie directors would not take place. The hole could probably be patched with tape or the leakage greatly slowed by plugging the hole with an appropriately-sized object. Even shooting a window would just result in, well, a hole in the window. At worst, the pilot would have to deploy the oxygen masks and descend to a lower altitude.

The danger of actually puncturing the fuselage if shots are fired can be reduced by the use of frangible bullets such as the Glaser Safety Slug (www.safetyslug.com/Ammo_Info.htm) which is designed to minimize penetration.

Easy Targets

The extraordinary events of September 11, 2001 require a serious look at the policies that made these horrific events possible. It is now obvious that we should stop treating hijackings as hostage situations and start treating them like terrorist attacks.

We can all see clearly now that airliners are weapons, not merely conveyances. Hijackers must therefore be prevented from gaining control of an aircraft no matter what the cost. We should turn airliner cockpits into hardened, secure areas where no one can forcefully gain entry without bringing down the aircraft. At the same time, our policy should be one of no capitulation. It should be our policy to permit any number of passenger/hostages to be killed rather than allow access to the cockpit area under duress. As we have now seen, the consequences of turning an aircraft over to hijackers are too horrific to do otherwise.

Like many others on September 11, before all air traffic was grounded, I wondered “Would they really shoot down a civilian airliner full of innocent passengers to prevent it from crashing into another building?” This is a choice we can avoid, as a nation, only by deciding right now, and sending notice to all, that, yes, we would sacrifice an entire planeload of passengers and crew to avoid potentially even more deaths.

As I write this, it is all but certain that some passengers of United flight 93, the one that went down in rural Pennsylvania, short of its intended target, were faced with a similar question to which the answer was obvious, if not an easy one to make. They were aware of the World Trade Center crashes and doubtless suspected that they faced a similar fate.

Faced with a tough decision, it is highly probable that the passengers and crew attempted to regain control of the aircraft and that, as a result, flight 93 did not reach its target. We have no way of knowing how many lives were saved by the heroic actions of the people on flight 93. They should be commended and honored.

At the same time, we have to ask, how and why did we become such easy targets? Does it really take a life-and-death situation to move Americans to action? When did we decide to become sitting ducks?

Sitting Ducks

We’re all sitting ducks. It’s our national policy. Crazy as it seems, your government(s), federal, state and local, believe that you are safer if you are kept defenseless. Let’s examine this “sitting duck” pathology in more detail.

It is assumed, and we are often told, that we are not able to look out for ourselves. Only trained professionals should confront aggressors. We “civilians” should just cooperate with the attacker, lest we anger and provoke him/them into harming us. There is nothing worse, so it is said, than someone getting hurt. 

Government prefers that you remain defenseless in order to protect you. They think that you are safer when you are disarmed. To a large degree, the law requires that we be sitting ducks. This is loony.

I ask you, when some crazy man drove his pickup truck into a Luby’s cafeteria in Kileen, Texas and walked around casually executing people with a gun, were the Luby’s patrons safer for being unarmed? When a racist madman shot up a Long Island commuter train, were the commuters safer because they could not shoot back?

Time after time, officials wring their hands and bemoan the fact that the perpetrator had a gun. They never fret that no one else was armed and able to shoot back. Yet, in the vast majority of these mass-murder cases, had the potential victims not been disarmed — sitting ducks — the death toll would have been much lower.

At least one Luby’s patron had left her gun in the car — in accordance with Texas law — and as a result, had to see her parents murdered while she was helpless to do anything about it. It took 20 minutes for the police to show up and stop the slaughter. 

Who on that Long Island commuter train wouldn’t have appreciated having a “Bernard Goetz” aboard that day, armed and willing to fight back? None came forward, so the mass-murderer was able to expend all of his ammunition — 100 rounds — and only then were the commuters able to subdue him. The laws that said they must be unarmed placed those commuters in greater danger, not less, and the law certainly didn’t deter the nutcase from his murderous rampage. Laws against carrying guns never bother the nut-cases. Only good, honest people comply with these laws. 

Now we come back to the events of September 11, 2001. Were the passengers on four hijacked transcontinental flights safer for having been rendered disarmed and helpless? Absolutely not. Yet government’s reaction to the hijackings and subsequent events is to further disarm passengers. Airline “security” personnel are now confiscating nail trimmers and cuticle scissors, fer cryin’ out loud! Do they seriously think that this will thwart a determined hijacker?

Practically anything can be used as a weapon. The sharpened end of a toothbrush handle would make a great puncturing weapon. In a pinch, a shirtsleeve could be used to strangle. People have used cayenne pepper as a weapon,  not pepper spray, just the stuff from the seasoning section at the supermarket.

Persons intent on threatening or injuring others will always find a way. What are we as a country going to do about it? 

Government’s prescription is to render us even more helpless. Of course, this makes us “feel” safe. Had you polled airline passengers on September 10, the vast majority would have reported that air travel was safe — the metal and explosives detectors provide the illusion of safety from certain dangers. But feeling safe and actually being safe are two very different things, as we learned on September 11.

Air travelers are now burdened with even more onerous restrictions and are reporting that the new impositions make them feel safe again. But it is still an illusion. Safety cannot be achieved by making us even more vulnerable.

A finger poked into an eye will maim for life. Bones are easily enough broken with your bare hands. Short of restraining each person in a straight jacket and tying them into their seats, can any number of new “security” restrictions create actual safety from those determined to harm others?

I say it’s time for a change in policy,  a change in attitude. We need to reverse the trends in government that discourage and even forbid fighting back. Rather than rendering air travelers helpless, why not empower them to defend themselves?

Crank up your imaginations and ponder this: What would have happened if everyone on the hijacked airliners — crew, passengers, even hijackers — had been armed with guns? Could the death toll possibly have been any worse? I doubt it. More likely, knowing that they were seriously out-numbered by passengers with guns, the hijackings would never have happened. When mass murders and nut cases seek to kill lots of people, they don’t trot down to the local police station. They look for places where people will be disarmed — sitting ducks. And government provides lots of places where mass shootings are enabled, where targets are plentiful and disarmed. 

Belatedly, government recognizes the advantage of bearing arms for defense of airliners but they want to employ “sky marshals” — who would have been outnumbered in the recent hijackings — or they want to arm the pilots, who really ought to be flying the plane, not having to shoot it out with hijackers.

Lawmakers think that disarming us makes society “safer.” They believe this because government has a very low opinion of you. Government believes that you can’t be trusted with weapons, that We the People are irresponsible. Your government believes that you are the enemy. You’ve heard the rhetoric. If we’re armed, blood will run in the streets. Every traffic altercation will result in a shooting, so they say, despite empirical evidence to the contrary.

It is no coincidence that where the laws most restrict self defense (“anti-gun laws” are actually anti-self-defense laws), crime is worst. Yet again and again, government ignores the effects of their policy prescriptions and gives us more of the same — as they are doing now in response the hijackings. To defend against the next hijackings, passengers will have to use what… plastic spoons?

I used to work in an industrial environment where worker safety was a constant concern. One memorable safety poster said “You’re looking at the one most responsible for your safety.” This was accompanied by a patch of silver foil, a low-grade mirror. The message was clear: Each of us is the one most responsible for our own personal safety. 

If, as government officials profess, they really have your best interests — your safety — in mind, you’d think that public policy would be based on what actually works. They should be asking: What actually reduces crime? What really saves lives? Instead, we get public policy based on Wishful Thinking. We wish people would be nice to one another. We hope that banning weapons will render people incapable of violence. In fact, the opposite happens. Disarming us only emboldens those who would prey on us.

Apparently, America is willing to sacrifice the occasional airliner or World Trade Center as the price of feeling safe. The additional murders, rapes and assaults that occur in jurisdictions where citizens cannot bear arms for defense are of no great consequence to legislators and regulators. Even the loss of six thousand lives in one day of terrorism can’t seem to shake the almost religious belief that we are better off if we are not equipped to protect ourselves.

Yet, it’s simple common sense: if you were about to commit a criminal act, would you want to encounter armed opposition?

Much government policy is born of the attitude that “violence is bad.” Unfortunately, they consider self-defense — fighting back — to be just as bad as the aggressor’s initial violent act. This has given rise, in some jurisdictions, to laws that essentially require you to surrender everything to an aggressor and defend yourself only as a last resort. We are expected to meekly accept our victimization so as to minimize “violence.” Loony.

Crazier still that we citizens go along with it.

When I heard on the news this morning that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center, I saw in my mind’s eye a small, private aircraft whose pilot had suffered a heart attack or maybe fallen asleep. When I heard that a second aircraft had hit the towers, I said to my wife, “We’re under attack.”

Until today, we’ve treated airline hijackings as hostage situations. I suspect that all future hijackings will be treated as terrorist attacks. An airliner is no longer just a conveyance; it’s a flying bomb — a weapon.

The word is that the terrorists on one aircraft were armed with only knives (per a passenger with cell phone). I haven’t heard about the others. It is distressing that they were apparently able to hijack four out of four targeted aircraft. I suspect that the hijackers gained control by simply threatening passengers and crew. Somewhere theres a policy that says, “Don’t endanger passengers or crew; cooperate.” This is our (the USA’s) Achilles heal. I mean, even at Columbine H.S., the SWAT team was still cowering outside the school a full hour after the terrorists had already killed themselves, lest anyone get hurt.

And the terrorists had a 75% success rate at hitting their targets with the aircraft. Surely Air Traffic Control had a good idea that something was very, very wrong for quite a long time before the first of the crashes.

I’d like to see the FAA require “hardening” of airliner cockpits such that no one can break in without downing the aircraft. To eliminate terrorists gaining cockpit access via duress, we also need a policy that says we do not open a cockpit door to anyone regardless of how many passengers/hostages are threatened or killed. The potential damage if terrorists are admitted is obviously too great to permit access. This policy would have to come from the Feds because any airline that instituted such without it being required, would be seen as callous — not unlike what I must seem right now.

We will learn all the wrong lessons from this. Today, I fear, marks a turning point. Look for every domestic law enforcement agency, especially the feds, to come forward with their Wish List of Big Brother proposals and try to take advantage of this tragedy to gain more power over your lives. Look for approval of more infrastructure needed to operate a Police State.

Most national tragedies are followed by an orgy of frenzied legislation. All manner of liberty-infringing measures will be proposed and (largely) approved by a Congress that wants to be seen as “doing something” about the terrorist problem.

As I write this, bombs or missiles are falling on Kabul, Afghanistan. I’ve heard no official word regarding the source. If this attack originated from American forces, I sure hope that we have compelling evidence that we have the right people targeted for retribution.

One bit of analysis you won’t be hearing on the TV is this: Bill Clinton is largely to blame for this attack. Not only did he severely cut funding for human intelligence operations (spies), it was Clinton who bombed a baby formula factory — saying it manufactured chemical weapons — in order to get the Lewinsky story off the front page. You can’t do that sort of thing and not expect repercussions. These are William Jefferson Clinton’s chickens coming home to roost.

Today is not simply a tragedy but rather the beginning of a much larger one.