By: Logan Dierker

Response After September 11th, 2001 Terrorist Attacks

 

Previous to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, there were plenty of threats of terrorism towards many different countries (Sweet 13). Only when the World Trade Center was attacked by commercial flights that had been hijacked did the U.S. realize the magnitude of the threat of terrorism. An ABC News article by Lisa Stark written just after the attack on September 25th, 2011 shows the initial reactions from the pilots union about arming pilots. The union wanted Congress to allow pilots to be armed in the cockpit (Stark). The union president explained that they are aware of the risks of arming pilots but they felt that the risks outweigh the benefits (Stark). This led directly to the making of the FFDO Program. The article also refreshes the memory of the number of people that were dead or missing in the attacks, a whopping 7,000 people (Stark). The reaction of Americans was that the U.S. needs to improve air transportation security. ABC News also tends to be a more liberal news station, and many liberal Americans are against having armed pilots due to the safety concerns. Taking this into consideration, this article is not biased towards liberal values or conservative values, and reports on the pilot union wanting to have armed pilots for increased security of the airplane and to prevent the hijacking of an airplane. This shows that since the threat of terrorism is very real; no matter what political ideology a person is, many Americans agree that arming pilots is a good security aspect in aviation security. It proves that even if you are all for restrictions on gun rights for regular citizens, it is hard to deny the threat of terrorism and the pilot union wanting permission to carry guns in the cockpit after the 9/11 attacks.