When it was still the United States Postal Department and the Postmaster General was a Cabinet level position, the agency was armed to the teeth! There were pistols hidden at every post office window. Every railway mail clerk was armed. Mail carriers were armed. States recognized this in laws like this Kentucky statute.
527.020 Carrying concealed deadly weapon.
(1) A person is guilty of carrying a concealed weapon when he or she carries concealed a firearm or other deadly weapon on or about his or her person.
(2) Peace officers and certified court security officers, when necessary for their protection in the discharge of their official duties; United States mail carriers when actually engaged in their duties; and agents and messengers of express companies, when necessary for their protection in the discharge of their official duties, may carry concealed weapons on or about their person.
At one time, the pilot of any aircraft used to transport mail was REQUIRED to be armed. FAA regulations left the decision as to arming of flight crews to the certificate holder until the '94 when it was quietly rescinded. Some of us remember when pilots were routinely armed and expected to be the "good guys" able to defend against the "bad guys."
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/2001_3341305/hero-in-the-cockpit-pistol-served-pilot-well-in-54.htmlJuly 6, 1954, when a strapping teen-ager armed with a pistol commandeered an American Airlines DC-6 at the Cleveland Airport, only to be shot and fatally wounded by the captain before the airplane left the ground. The shooting ended the life of Raymond Kuchenmeister, 15. It made a reluctant hero of the late Capt. William "Bill" Bonnell of Fort Worth...
Bill Bonnell joined American Airlines in 1936 and that airline, like others, transported U.S. mail.
"Back in those days, the pilot or co-pilot had to hand-carry the mail from the plane to the terminal," recalled George Patten, 85, a retired American pilot and friend of Bonnell's. "Postal regulations required that you be armed. We all had to have guns, and American had us buy little .380s."
...Finally, flight engineer Bob Young told Kuchenmeister they would take off but that it was necessary to throw a switch behind Kuchenmeister before the plane could taxi. As Kuchenmeister turned to look for the switch, Bonnell reached into his flight bag with his left hand, removed the pistol, swung around to his right and shot Kuchenmeister. The wounded hijacker then attempted to shoot Bonnell, but his pistol misfired and Bonnell shot him again.
"I shot him in the hip," Bonnell later recalled. "He sagged a bit. I let him have it again, a little higher.
"I had a maniac on my plane. We had women and children. What the hell could a guy do?"
Back in the day, those of us who were traveling and legally armed, reported such information to the airplane's captain. If you were transporting guns, you boarded first, and at the captain's discretion, surrendered them to the flight engineer. Depending on the circumstances and your credentials, he was free to let you retain your firearm.
http://search.newspaperarchive.com/API/Search/Dataapi.aspx?search=IMAGEID:18258905&returns=PDFThe only airline hijacker ever shot on an U.S. airliner IN FLIGHT, was on September 15, 1970 on board a TWA, Boeing 707 jet. The flight left Chicago for San Francisco, but gunman Don Irwin, 27, seized the plane just after an L.A. stopover. Irwin threatened flight attendants in the aft galley with his gun demanding the plane head to North Korea.
This particular plane was in no way equipped or even able to make such a journey. This hijacker was not quite as clever as he thought.
The pilot J.K. Gilman was informed of the hijacking and was aware that
Robert Denisco, a Brinks guard was a passenger in First Class. Capt. Gilman quickly used the telephone to ask a First Class fight attendant to tell Denisco what was going on and to, “tell him I said to go back and shoot that Bastard!”
"Robert DeNisco remembers it as the day he foiled a hijacking, saved a plane full of people and lived to tell President Nixon all about it."
Perhaps if the pilots had still routinely been armed, like they had been for over 70 years, they would have been able to deal with the hijackers more effectively. Perhaps if policemen, military and couriers could still travel armed, without fanfare, like we did forty years ago the 9-11 hijackers might have met the same fate as Kuchenmeister or Irwin.
The Post Office Department was armed through most of its history. When the Post Office was abolished and became the Postal Service the guns that were routinely kept were slowly collected up in the mid-Seventies. Postal workers didn't start
going 'postal' until decades AFTER the Postal Service did away with guns for carriers and clerks.
So those who wanted kinder, gentler air crew and 'civilized' mail employees had them all quietly disarmed. They got what they wanted. It's a lot easier to gun innocents down in cold blood when you are guaranteed they will be unable to shoot back. It's a boon to robbers disinclined to leave witnesses as well as to the demented looking to solve their interpersonal squabbles in spectacular infamy.
The aircrew of the hijacked airplanes followed the advice often seen in here to those confronted by violent criminals....JUST GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT.
That was the official FAA training counter-hijacking training too, JUST GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT.
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