I’m sure you thought the Transportation Safety Administration wasn’t named in an ironic fashion. They are on the verge of disproving that with their new allowances for pilots to possess firearms on commercial flights.

Now this is what many people call one of the dumbest things that the TSA could do. President Bush even came out against it, and considering how celebratory the NRA was toward his election, Bush is not a man who hates arming people to the teeth.

If you’re curious as to what firing guns in pressurized cabins can do, I highly recommend a 1964 documentary entitled “Goldfinger,” in which a man named James Bond struggles to survive such an occurrence. It is also a cautionary film about the dangers of hat throwing, so I highly recommend it to all those who are in dire need of education.

But if you don’t have time to rush to the video store, I’ll just describe the results of a gunshot in the cabin as “bang! Whoooooosh … Aaaahhhh!” For those of you who are unfamiliar with onomatopoeia, those were the sounds of a gun firing and breaking a window, which then creates a vacuum that would have the potential to suck everyone through those tiny airline windows you can’t even see through half the time.

Of course, even documentaries like this tend to exaggerate, so it’s not a guarantee that such a thing would happen, but the danger of hitting something important in the plane is pretty high.

So basically, firing guns in an airplane ranks on a list of bad ideas right up there with an all-black cast revival of “Fiddler on the Roof.” But to some it may seem worth the potential danger.

The question is whether passengers really care to be exposed to that risk in order to marginally limit the danger of terrorists flying planes into buildings. The question we should be considering is why are we so certain that they’re going to do the same thing again? The whole awfulness of Sept. 11 was that it was so stupid that they were able to do this and that it was totally unexpected. If they’re that uncreative to try the same thing again, well, it’s utterly astounding that we haven’t wiped terrorism off the globe.

But, alas, it seems that President Bush and I are the only ones who see this idea of armed pilots as troubling. The real debate seems to be whether background checks are necessary for pilots before they are trained to use their firearms and how the guns should be transported from the terminal onto the flight.

According to The Associated Press, Steve Luckey, chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association, is a supporter of background checks on pilots before determining which pilots will receive the firearms. The reason is a little disturbing, though. He supports them — get this — because they would filter out people who were psychologically incapable of killing someone. Good grief.

If only we could just administer these tests to everyone, our lives would be a lot easier. Hell, give the test to the passengers we’re so afraid of that we need to arm the pilots. If a passenger is capable of killing, make sure he or she is seated comfortably in the luggage compartment, or at least put the individual in coach where they’d be lucky to get down the aisle before the plane lands.

But in answering the question as to whether the chance of accidental discharge or of a depressurized cabin is worth it in comparison to a pilot possibly shooting a hijacker, or more likely giving the hijacker another weapon to use against everyone else, there are numerous plausible responses. One could certainly admit that they’d rather chance it because that pistol may bring down a hijacker.

Another person might genuinely think that they’d rather take their chances with al-Qaida, particularly since the reason the hijackers gained control of the planes was because people were unaware of what was happening, and assumed that they’d just be flown to an airport, used as hostages, and treated brutally. I think it’s safe to say very few people anticipated what would happen that day.

If we’re willing to give pilots guns, why not just put knockout gas in the plane’s fuselage and if there’s a sign of a hijacker or R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, who allegedly gets belligerent on flights, the pilot can push a switch, the “oxygen” masks drop, and everyone goes to Happy Sleep Land until the pilot can land the plane.

Granted, it could pose a serious danger to asthmatics, but compared to guns in airplanes, it seems downright sensible.

There are a lot of difficulties with airplane security. Putting one more variable on the flight really doesn’t seem likely to solve the problem. Now if we could simply get bouncers for airplanes or give the pilots fake guns as a deterrent, we may be on to something.

Tim Kearns is a senior in political science from Bellevue, Neb.