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Notes -
You have a very Hollywood or maybe video game understanding of handguns destroying machinery.
Things change when you're in a pressurized cabin designed to be as lightweight as possible. Which is also what gives us hope for space swords in the distant future!
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You do realise that airplanes, being optimised for low weight, are nothing like your typical machinery? Handgun bullets can likely penetrate through the aluminium exterior walls quite easily (and while the idea of explosive decompression through a bullet-sized hole is bogus, the implications of fuel leaking into the body through one in the fuel tank are plenty concerning), but more importantly, the interior side of the wall, separated from the passenger cabin by only some plastic lining, is dense with sensitive cabling and hydraulics. I recommend checking out some airplane maintenance videos for reference, or any of the numerous series of plane crash investigation media for instances of how tiny pieces of shrapnel and localised fires due to bad insulation severed some or another critical control and made the plane uncontrollable.
Don't just take it from me, either: this problem was recognised immediately when the idea of armimg any "good guys" in planes became popular.
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