The Terrorists™ are going to 'come after us,' says House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), and they may use a gyrocopter to do it.
A handful of congressmen and federal officials have raised safety concerns after a 61-year old man landed a gyrocopter on the lawn of the capital building, but none have predicted certain doom in the way that Chaffetz and some of his colleagues have.
“The aura of invincibility that law enforcement will prevail if someone jumps a fence or flies a gyrocopter has disappeared,” Chaffetz told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”
“That shine is gone,” the House Oversight Committee chairman argued. “The question is what they’re going to do from here.” [...]
“You’ve got some real deranged people and some sophisticated terrorists that are going to come after us,” he continued. “This is going to happen again.”
Granted I do not spend my days on capital hill, but personally I find Chaffetz's unhinged paranoia far more troubling than the threat of gyrocopter-flying terrorists.
And Chaffetz isn't alone. Last week Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called for shooting the man out of the sky.
“He should have been subject to being shot out of the sky. I don’t know why he wasn’t, but our nation is under siege. Radical Islam is a threat to our homeland. There are probably radical Islamic cells in our backyard already,” the South Carolina Republican said. “And if somebody is willing to, you know, approach vital government infrastructure, they should do so at their own peril.”
And what if the gyrocopter was shot out of the sky and landed on a packed restaurant or national monument? Do we really want congressmen who see terrorists in their soup or hiding out behind their Weber grill dictating national security policy or, for that matter, foreign policy?
In hid mind, 61-year old Doug Hughes may have had the best intentions when he flew a gyrocopter into the capital, but as if often the case there are unintended consequences for those who think they can shock the federal government and Congress into reforming campaign finance law or even the NSA or the IRS.
By pulling off the gyrocopter stunt, Hughes will not have convinced Congress to amend campaign finance law, but he may have convinced Congress to further tighten security around the capital. And unless we plan on deploying heavy weapons in the area, I imagine anti-gyrocopter security measures will involve drones.
The same congressmen who have nightmares of gyrocopter-flying terrorists have no problem allowing guns in as many public places as possible.