I am tired of our news outlets letting any fucking moron talk as if they are an expert.

In the past two years I have logged nearly a hundred thousand actual flight miles. I've been into and out of logan and dulles. I don't have any illusions about how good their security is. I have never gotten onto a plane unarmed. never.

In fact airports and airplanes have always been the only places that I feel the need to be armed to the teeth.

when I say this people look at me like I'm loon. but this scenario has haunted my night mares ever since I first started flying. I have always been confident that it is difficult to get guns on board planes. it is very difficult. so difficult that no one does it.

Knives are another manner entirely.

I like knives. I always have. I have knives. I always have knives.

I have guns too. but I don't feel the same way about them. I don't even keep them in my house. People are scared of guns. they make loud noises and enable you to kill things or people from a safe distance away. turning what should be a personal transaction into something very distant and impersonal. but in a way people are comfortable with guns. It is easy to simply think of guns as dangerous and let it be at that.

Not every person is wired in such a way as to allow them to kill with knives. it is a VERY messy and personal way to kill something or someone. innocent bystanders(and probably also not so innocent bystanders) are usually stunned by the amount of mess that knife attacts make. so stunned that a determined person with a knife can sometimes kill more people that a nutjob with an automatic rifle in a mcdonalds. Japan found this out this past summer.

My fear on planes has always been just this. someone would would show up on board with knife. after we got up in the air go up to the front, to talk with a flight attendant, do a quick down slice at the jugular, burst through the cockpit door lock it from the inside and kill both pilots and auger us into the ground at 500 plus miles an hour. it never occured to me that they might have taken out a building with more people in it than my hometown.

I always got a seat where I could see the cockpit door. and my hand was never far from my own knife. I was cranky with flight attendants that liked to close the curtain for the first class and often argued with them to leave it open just a little so I could see the door. some people might have classed me as paranoid if they knew why I was so insistent. So I never told them why. I just let them assume that I was a pain in the ass fraidy cat.

I am not the worlds best knife fighter. but I am good. better than many who practice a hell of a lot more than I do. good enough to take out two or three bad guys in an enclosed space like a 757 cockpit.

I know that I am not the only person who feels this way on airplanes. I know it because spyderco makes a knife called the copilot. it has a reassuring big knife heft and feel but fits into the Airlines 2 inch restriction on blade lenght. and Boker sells a lot of ceramic folders. I never bothered much. I often carried my full size mariner(ten plus ounces of ats-55 steel) and never once had trouble with detectors.

I'd be willing to bet my right big toe that somebody like me was responsible for making sure that the plane near pittsburgh never made it to whatever massively populated place it was headed for. if that is true we may never know. but in my heart I know it is.

In fact my first assumption when i heard what was going on was that somebody did just my nightmare with a big ceramic knife. My wife just told me that they think(based on a cell phone conversation with an exsenator's wife(now late wife)) they used box cutters. yup, box cutters.

fucking sharp as all get out at least for the first couple swipes. cheap as hell and very low mass. the metal detector would probably never catch them even dialed all the way up. my boots have more metal in them that a plastic frame box cutter.

so we are shutting offices all over the country, secret service agents are running scared, THOUSANDS of people are dead, and our country is in turmoil, because a few determined people with 79 cent knives had a grudge and a plan. Now our government is gonna look for a scape goat and our president is promising to hunt down "those responsible" and bring them to justice. but that is never going to happen because the people actually responsible are dead. in the planes they used to kill so many others.

over the next couple days or weeks we will see our people put to the test of what we believe. our president promised that they will protect us. but also promised that our freedom would win. what ever else I think about that man those two things are just not possible simultaneously. think about that these next couple days as we watch congress pass whatever kneejerk legislation they think appropriate.

And keep in mind that what ever conspiracy theory the feds or the media eventually latch on to. that it really could have been a few determined people with a plan.

and 79 cent knives.