From Bruce Schneier, quoting Salon’s pilot columnist:

In the days ahead, you can expect sharp debate on whether the killing was justified, and whether the nation’s several thousand air marshals — their exact number is a tightly guarded secret — undergo sufficient training. How are they taught to deal with mentally ill individuals who might be unpredictable and unstable, but not necessarily dangerous? Are the rules of engagement overly aggressive? Those are fair questions, but not the most important ones. Wednesday’s incident fulfills what many of us predicted ever since the Federal Air Marshals Service was widely expanded following the 2001 terror attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington: The first person killed by a sky marshal, whether through accident or misunderstanding, would not be a terrorist. In a lot of ways, Alpizar is the latest casualty of Sept. 11. He is not the victim of a trigger-happy federal marshal but of our own, now fully metastasized security mania.