Portal:Libertarianism/Selected quote/10

“ 4. Next, gun control. The perpetrators of 9/11/01 did their evil deed based on the threat of no more than razor sharp box cutters. (There was also the fact that previously, air plane high jackers were not suicidal, so pilots were told to submit in order to save lives). Well, there is one way to obviate future such occurrences: arm, if not all passengers, then at least the pilots and staff. No more crashing into buildings, then, nor the need to shoot down a future hypothetical airliner for this purpose. In any rational world, anxious to avoid a repetition of 9/11, this is exactly what would take place. But ours, alas, is beset by destructive ideologies. Earnest entreaties by pilots' associations to this effect, signed by literally tens of thousands of them, have fallen on deaf Department of Transportation ears. Instead, they have contented themselves with meticulous searches for box cutters, nail clippers and nail files; talk about the Maginot Line.

According to the ideology now prevalent amongst our masters, we are to entrust the landing and takeoff skills of pilots with our very lives, but dare not rely upon them to be armed, even when specifically qualified to do so, as a last line of defense against evil doers. And this despite the best efforts of John Lott and other researchers who have shown that gun legalization saves lives.

” — Walter Block (1941)
Toward a Libertarian Society (2014)