Pilots want government to speed up gun training

? After a slow start in training pilots to carry guns, the government said Tuesday that it had filled its weekly classes and expected to arm all qualified pilots who volunteer within a year.

An association of pilots said, however, that the government was discouraging volunteers by insisting on psychological testing, requiring lockboxes to carry weapons and holding training at a single remote site.

Fewer than 200 passenger airline pilots were trained and deputized to carry a weapon since Congress ordered the program in November.

“We should have thousands, not hundreds,” said Capt. Bob Lambert, president of the Airline Pilots’ Security Alliance, a grass-roots organization with members from all major U.S. airlines.

Lambert spoke at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport during one of several press conferences run by pilots around the country to urge the Bush administration to speed up the program.

John Moran, who heads the program, said it’s meeting the demand.

“The great majority of those who have volunteered will be trained within a year,” Moran said.

Full classes of 48 are booked through the end of September, he said, and the agency plans to double its classes in January.

The government checks pilots’ backgrounds and gives them written psychological tests and interviews to qualify them for a week of classes, weapons instruction and hand-to-hand combat drills before they’re given a gun.

TSA chief James Loy called the psychological testing an important tool in determining a pilot’s aptitude for using lethal force while flying an airliner.

“That is not a small thing for anyone to think about in a cowboy fashion,” Loy said. “That is a dramatically important thing for us to get right.”

The Transportation Security Administration says only a few dozen pilots who applied failed the psychological tests. The agency stresses the test doesn’t measure whether pilots are competent to fly a plane.