General Aviation Security After the Austin Crash

It's asinine reporting and a total lack of common sense like this that drives me nuts:

Texas Plane Crash Exposes Gaps in Air Security

GEORGETOWN, Texas — After 9/11, cockpit doors were sealed, air marshals were added and airport searches became more aggressive, all to make sure an airliner could never again be used as a weapon. Yet little has been done to guard against attacks with smaller planes.

That point was driven home with chilling force on Thursday when a Texas man with a grudge against the IRS crashed his single-engine plane into an office building in a fiery suicide attack. One person inside the building was also killed.

"It's a big gap," said R. William Johnstone, an aviation security consultant and former staff member of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. "It wouldn't take much, even a minor incident involving two simultaneously attacking planes, to inflict enough damage to set off alarm bells and do some serious harm to the economy and national psyche."

What a moron. Joe Stack owned the airplane, the hanger, and was a licensed pilot. What are you going to do, put a Soviet Style Political Officer in each and every private airplane that flies so that they can hold a gun to the pilot's head and ensure correct behavior? What possible rules, short of the typical knee-jerk BAN IT response can you possibly implement to keep someone from crashing a 2 or 4 seater aircraft into anything?

Frankly, they're lucky he didn't decide to just shoot the place up. He probably would have done far greater damage to the IRS personnel in the building by grabbing a shotgun and going on a rampage. While two people dead and a handful injured isn't a good thing, a nice gun rampage could have resulted in scores dead and scores more wounded.

Ultimately, you can not stop people from killing other people. No law, no rule, no regulation is going to prevent it. What you can do is maybe address the issues that are at the core of these actions - an out of control Government populated with power hungry little egomaniacs that love nothing more than to ruin people's lives. These idiots in Government think that we're milk cows to be squeezed until we run dry, and then they run around waving their hands when one of the cows decides it has had enough and stomps a few heads in to show its displeasure.

Cause and effect. Squeeze tighter, take ever more power out of the hands of citizens, and you'll get more citizens that will decide that they have nothing else left to lose and take actions that will be highly detrimental to the nearest sets of Government thugs and, unfortunately, any innocent people that are unlucky enough to be nearby at the wrong time.

[Sarcasm]
To the total idiots at the FAA and DHS - you want to "really" stop this from EVER happening again? Ban all forms of aviation except for large Commercial Airlines.

It's for the children.
[/Sarcasm]