Item: Valrico’s own Barry Brunstein recently went two out of three when unwittingly carrying his loaded 9 mm Beretta pistol by airport security in Tampa, Atlanta and Memphis. Only Memphis prevented the hat trick of breached security by nabbing Brunstein for packing heat in his carry-on bag.
Item: The Transportation Security Administration has announced that it will not insist that security screeners be high school graduates. Such insistence, mind you, would have disqualified a quarter of the work force of 28,000.
Alarm bells should be sounding everywhere, including TIA and Hartsfield International, over this turn of events. Is the federal takeover of airport security little more than a recycling of the minimum wage, maximum attitude personnel who are part of the problem? They are no match for the bumbling Barry Brunsteins, let alone the malevolent Mohammed Attas.
Is it too much to ask that those who we entrust to help keep a planeload of 747 passengers from a horrific death not drop out of high school? Is the first line of defense in America’s war on terrorism the Maginot Line of security screening?