In reply to: If you are attempting to reduce risk by disarming individuals who you don't trust then you will move in that direction until you are satisfied with the level of risk achieved.

My question is Where does it stop? Short answer is it won't.
There will always be some event that occurs that requires a further tightening of our lapse of security.

About 5 or 6 years ago congress was trying to pass the Know Your Customer law that would have required banks and airlines to report any activity that was outside of your normal level of activity. For example, you normally fly coach one weekend a month and pay cash for your ticket. One week you decide to fly 1st class and pay with your Visa card. You would have been flagged. The intent of the law was to help ID drug dealers but it was not put into effect because of concerns of abuse and violations of our civil liberties.

The Dept of Homeland Security is currently "testing" a revamped version of this law at a "few" undisclosed airports with the intent of stopping terrorists. Only now there is a background check done on every person who buys a ticket and that customer is coded green (ok), yellow (might be allowed to fly after further investigation), or red (you don't fly for the next 30 years, no B.S.). You don't have the right to know what caused the flag and there are no provisions for appeal. Now I don't have anything in my background that should raise a flag but I don't want the feds rummaging through my background every year when I fly to Dallas to pick up my kids.

These types of laws, when left unchecked, only lead to more draconian laws in the future. They also set a dangerous precedent. Will the county sheriff be allowed into your house to check you out because you drive county road 42 on a daily basis?

No amount of lobby security is going to stop a terrorist attack on a building. Let's see...one clean cut, unarmed bandit passes security. He opens any fire door leadng to the outside and lets in 10 or 100 heavily armed fellow bandits and it's all over. How do you increase security to prevent that? Guards at the fire exits? Psychic readings for anyone entering the building? There's no such thing as foolproof security. The bad guys will ALWAYS find a way around. It's kind of like gun control. Only the law abiding are affected as they line up to register their guns. The bad guys won't bother.

In the end you haven't managed much risk at all. You've only put out the people you're trying to protect and redirected any real threat to a quarter you still haven't identified.

That's my 2 cents

Ed