This question: Do commercial aircraft carry personal weapons? until yesterday contained an answer that began with words to the effect that arming pilots was “a recipe for disaster” due to the presumed ease with which an attacker might disarm a pilot and turn the weapon on them. It was stated that this opinion was a “simple fact,” but contained no justification for taking this position.
A few posted comments disagreed, but the answer remained up for almost a week.
Just yesterday evening I rebutted the opinion by remarking that it was not factual, that the TSA does not agree as evidenced by the existence of the Federal Flight Deck Officer program, pointed out that FFDOs are trained, and that success in disarming a trained individual requires extensive training and carries significant risk.
When I logged in this morning I noticed that this answer, as well as all comments, had been deleted. Not moved to discussion, not voluntarily deleted by the original answerer, (which I can still see…) but wiped clean, presumably by a moderator.
Was there something offensive in my comments that might have triggered this action?
