Training averted tragedy at OIA.

After any major public-safety incident, there are bound to be takeaways. Here’s a couple from Tuesday’s standoff between police and an apparently suicidal man with a fake weapon at Orlando International Airport:

Law-enforcement, led by the Orlando Police Department, skillfully defused a very difficult and dangerous situation.

And just imagine the mayhem that might have occurred if a legislative proposal to let people carry guns in airport terminals had been law.

The 26-year-old suspect, identified by authorities as Michael Wayne Pettigrew of Orlando, brandished a fake but realisticlooking handgun, which he pointed at police and himself. “Kill me,” he yelled at officers, according to an OPD report.

An officer at whom Pettigrew pointed his fake gun raised his own weapon, an AR-15 rifle, but didn’t fire because of a “large crowd of passengers running everywhere,” according to the report. Another officer yelled at Pettigrew to drop his weapon. He wouldn’t, but that officer also refrained from shooting with passengers nearby.

Instead, OPD’s Crisis Intervention Team was brought in to negotiate with the suspect. He eventually surrendered after a couple of hours. No shots were fired, and no one was injured. Police didn’t even determine Pettigrew’s gun was fake until after they took him into custody.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said officers “realized this was a person in mental distress [who] wanted to do the whole suicide by cop thing.” By exercising their professional judgment and restraint, fortified by their ongoing training and real-world experience, officers prevented one death, and perhaps more.

Consider how the incident might have played out if Florida legislators had allowed concealed-weapon permit holders — there are more than 1.5 million in the state — to pack their pistols in the terminal, one of the locations where they are currently barred from carrying by state law. That was the intent of Senate Bill 618, sponsored during this year’s legislative session by Sen. Greg Steube, a Sarasota Republican.

Steube introduced his bill before January, when a passenger at the Fort Lauderdale airport removed a gun from his checked luggage and allegedly killed five people and wounded eight others in the baggage-claim area. The senator insisted the airport massacre strengthened the case for passing his bill; he argued that a concealed-weapon permit holder allowed to carry a gun in the terminal could have intervened and stopped the killing.

Maybe. But even a well-meaning permit holder might have gotten caught up in an extended, chaotic shootout with the suspect that hit more bystanders, adding to the body count, and making the job of responding for law enforcement even more complex and hazardous.

In this week’s incident at Orlando’s airport, a permit holder who hadn’t been trained in dealing with an active shooter also might have shot as soon as Pettigrew waved his phony weapon. Pettigrew might have gotten his wish to be killed. And bystanders might have gone with him.

State law includes airport terminals among 15 location categories where concealed-weapon permit holders aren’t allowed to carry their guns. Steube introduced a series of bills for this year’s legislative session to eliminate several of these exclusions. Fortunately, they stalled amid opposition from key legislators. Lobbyists for the National Rifle Association, which pushed for the bills, have vowed to try again next year.

We hope this week’s incident at OIA will remind legislators that public safety is best left in the hands — and if necessary, trigger fingers — of professionals, not amateurs.