Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky on Tuesday said commercial airline pilots should be provided guns, saying he wants every potential terrorist in the world to know that if they come into the cockpit they’ll be shot.

Mr. Paul said that in the wake of a tragedy like the one in Oregon, where an alleged gunman shot and killed nine people last week at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, more controls on guns aren’t the answer.

“I do think that we should not pre-announce to the public, to the potentially crazy and homicidal people out there, that there are places they can go to shoot people,” Mr. Paul, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said on CNN. “And that’s what we’ve done with our schools - we say, well, there are no armed guards, there are no armed teachers, there are no armed off-duty policemen, and I think that’s a mistake.”

“I think we should do the opposite,” Mr. Paul said. “I think we should announce across America that there are not going to be gun-free zones where you can go and shoot people, and I think if we did that there is some deterrent effect.”

“I believe the same for our commercial airliners,” he said. “After 9/11, I was a big proponent of making sure our pilots were armed, and I have bills now to try to facilitate that. I want every potential jihadist and terrorist in the world to know that our pilots are armed, and that if you come into the cockpit you will be shot. And so I think there is a deterrent effect from guns.”

Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.