HOUSTON (AP) - A commercial airline pilot told a national gun rights conference Sunday that the Transportation Security Administration is continuing to drag its feet when it comes to arming pilots in the cockpit.

"We are being resisted -- the will of the people, the will of the Congress -- by the organization that was given charge of this effort," said Robert Davie, a pilot for 30 years who is a board member of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance.

Davie, who said he wouldn't identify the airline he works for due to the current "political environment," said only a few hundred of the thousands of pilots who have volunteered have received the TSA training necessary to carry a handgun in the cockpit.

"At this point, a long way down the road, we have approximately 200-250 pilots armed," Davie said of the training which President Bush approved last November. "That is a pretty pitiful number I would submit to you."

The pilot told those who attended the final day of the three-day annual conference that the TSA delays are based on the administration's decision to move its training facility from Georgia to a remote part of New Mexico after the first class graduated, its implementation of extensive psychological exams and a requirement that pilots carry their guns in a locked box when not in the cockpit.

The conference was sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

"How many of you carry your weapon in a locked lunch box?" Davie asked conference attendees, who responded with laughter. "What the heck good is that?"

TSA spokeswoman Jennifer Marty called Davie's allegation unfounded.

She said safe skies are something everyone wants, but that the training should be reserved for those who are mentally and physically capable of successfully making it through the weeks-long training course.

"You don't just issue a gun to anyone, " she said. "You have to go through the proper training, through the proper mental evaluation. ... It is all for the safety of pilots, as well as the traveling public."

By the end of this month, Marty said, 500 pilots are expected to have successfully completed the TSA training.

"We have classes going on continuously for the pilots," she said. "We are actually doing a lot to get more people through the classes and to be able to offer it to more pilots."

Part of the reason the administration moved the training to New Mexico, she said, was because the facility there offered more space to teach the hand-to-hand fighting techniques and extensive firearm training.

However, Davie and others in his organization, who have lodged numerous complaints about the slow pace of the training, think more needs to be done to secure the nation's flights sooner.

"Every day there are thousands of airplanes over your head," Davie said. "What we are trying to do is add to the layers of security. Every single one of us has seen the images of 9-11.

"It was especially horrifying for me because I thought, 'I could be in the front end of that machine. I could be watching that wall screen up at me and hear all the people in the back crying out in horror.'"

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, Davie said two layers of security have been put in place -- one on the ground and one in the air. However, he says both screeners at airports and newly installed cockpit doors can be penetrated.

The next layer should be to get as many armed pilots as possible in the air, Davie said, urging those attending the gun rights policy conference to write to their representatives and senators asking them to "to stop the TSA from this foot dragging. Help us in our drive to make the skies safer."