Obama Diverting Money From Armed Pilots Program

In an editorial on Tuesday, The Washington Times noted that the administration recently diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program. Instead, the money will be used to hired more supervisors to conduct field inspections of pilots, the Times reported.

The move will make air travel more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, something that should outrage travelers, said the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) said.

“This looks like completely unnecessary harassment of the pilots,”

the newspaper opined. CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb agreed that the Obama administration is

“risking public safety, as the newspaper put it, 'in the name of an anti-gun ideology.'"

According to the Air Line Pilots Association, the government – since April 2003 -- has trained thousands of volunteer airline pilots as federal flight deck officers to protect passenger and cargo aircraft flying throughout the United States.

“The FFDO program has evolved from a small program that armed airline pilots to protect the flight deck into a substantial, cost-effective security institution,”

Gottlieb noted that some politicians and bureaucrats have never liked the armed pilot program:

"These anti-gun, anti-self-defense bureaucrats seem more interested in their own power, and protecting their little empires, than they are in protecting the public. And now Obama is catering to their anti-gun bigotry."

The pilots’ union repeatedly has urged Congress to adequately fund the program, and its priorities for 2009 include bolstering the program.

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