(Tuesday, September 3, 2002) -- If all goes well this week, the Senate will vote on Bob Smith's provision to arm commercial pilots. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a similar version of the bill in July by a vote of 310-113. Incredible momentum has continued to build in the Senate where 25 Senators have now cosponsored Bob Smith's bill, S. 2554.

Senators Smith (R-NH) and Zell Miller (D-GA) are the chief sponsors of this pro-gun legislation -- a bill which has attracted some unlikely supporters, including the normally anti-gun Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

Recent revelations have shown that airport security is a joke. Air marshals are quitting the force in droves, leaving most flights unprotected. And while airport personnel continue to focus on nail clippers and letter openers, illegal guns keep slipping by undetected.

Last week, a North Carolina woman unknowingly took her husband's gun onto a flight and landed in Philadelphia. The error was not discovered until she tried to board her second flight.

Meanwhile, taxpayers have spent $3 billion in the past year to bolster a screening system at airports that investigators say discovers knives, firearms and explosives only 25 to 50 percent of the time at best.

Three billion dollars! How much less would it have cost to give each pilot a firearm?

In pursuing this reasonable goal, the Smith-Miller bill will require the government to authorize and deputize any qualified pilot wishing to carry a firearm for the protection of aircraft, passengers, and crew -- and it will create a program for training flight attendants in self-defense and threat assessment.

ACTION: Please ask your Senator to support the Smith-Miller legislation (S. 2554) so Americans can once again travel without fear. Arming the pilots is a solution that is long overdue. To identify your Senators, as well as to send a message via e-mail, see the Legislative Action Center at http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm on the GOA website.

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Dear Senator:

With September 11 just around the corner, our nation's skies are still unprotected. To date, all of our efforts to safeguard the "friendly skies" have been a joke.

Illegal weapons still get onto planes. Air marshals are "protecting" only a fraction of the daily flights, and many of the ones that are on duty are vastly overworked. Many have quit the force entirely.

Arming the pilots is a solution that is highly popular and is long overdue. Investor's Business Daily reported on a poll which shows that more than three-fourths of the American public support arming pilots with real guns, including an astounding 77 percent of those who otherwise support gun control. Likewise, a February survey of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) members found that 73 percent of pilots favor carrying firearms on board planes.

Please support the Smith-Miller legislation to arm the pilots (S. 2554). Before the government orders a commercial aircraft shot from the sky by an F-16 fighter jet, pilots deserve to have a final chance to save the lives of their passengers and crew, in addition to untold thousands of innocent lives on the ground.

Please support the Smith-Miller language to arm pilots for the security of their passengers and crew. Thank you.

Sincerely,