How secure do we want to be?

The FBI is asking for any pictures or video taken around the time of Friday’s shooting at LAX because nothing quite like this has happened at a U.S. airport before. Airport security is intended to keep people from sneaking weapons onto planes, but in this case, according to a note found by the FBI, Paul Ciancia was gunning for TSA agents.

“He indicated his anger and his malice towards the TSA officers,” said FBI Special Agent in charge David Bowdich.

Police are pretty worried, because if he’d been after passengers, he had enough ammo to shoot just about everybody in the unsecured area outside the checkpoint.

Which as CBS’s Teresa Garcia points out, is an area open to anyone.

“I have spent many an hour in the LAX airport, I saw even homeless people sleeping on benches there. And clearly, Paul Ciancia got through without a problem. If we become so intensely worried about how easy it is to get a gun into there, I wouldn’t be surprised about some kind of screening process before you walk through those sliding doors.”

Really? We’re going to make passengers go through a curbside pre-check?

The irony is that in the name of security, we’ve created these corrals with hundreds of passengers crammed together waiting to be searched; passengers like Linda, “I think the probability of anything every happening again right now right here, probably not.”

She found herself at the very spot where it happened, but took the approach that sooner or later all of us have to take: just keep focused on where you’re going.

Said Linda, “I’ll feel secure when I get to the gate and I have a Starbucks and I’m OK.”

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