Safety is our number one.....problem.

That's right, Casey Kasem. Safety is our number one problem. And moving up fast - at number two with a bullet - would be "We have our heads firmly implanted up our butts and can't get them out!".

I had to go to a government building the other day to file some papers for work. When you enter this building, you have to go through a security "check" before you can get to the elevators to get where you are actually going. This security check consists of - get this - walking across a great expanse to the back of the lobby where a security "guard" sits surrounded by a wooden divider of sorts. On one side of him is a conveyor belt on which you have to put your purse, cell phone and whatever else you are carrying so that it can be x-rayed. On the other side of the "guard" is a metal detector that you have to walk through.

So, you might find yourself asking, what exactly is my problem with this. Well, folks, I'll tell you.... my problem with this is the massive stupidity in play in anyone thinking that this is an answer to security problems.

First, the only employees that are protected from a crazed gunman are those in offices that you need to take the elevators to access. The people in the library right off the lobby - that's that open door several feet before you get to the security "guard" - and the "guard" himself are completely unprotected. Or do they really think that the wooden divider will protect this guy from anything??

But that's ALMOST better than my youngest daughter's school. There, you have to stand behind bullet proof glass and be buzzed in by the school secretary. Wonderful. Right?

Wrong again, Charley!

The bullet proof glass on the inside of the school does nothing for those children (my daughter included) and their teachers who are in the modular classrooms outside.

Well, you say "Gee whiz! They put up a fence around those modular buildings." Of COURSE they did. And I don't know any criminally-minded gunman that would think to jump over the fence to get where he was going.

Silly me to worry!

Now my older daughter goes to a school where there is, similarly, bulletproof glass between the person trying to enter and the actual lobby, office and classrooms. That is, if you go in the front doors. If you go in the backdoors, there are wonderful signs advising you that this is a gun-free zone.

Again, silly me to worry. Everyone knows that mad bombers and the like respect signs about not carrying guns.

I take back my earlier statement. I don't really think safety is our number one problem. I think it HAS been replaced by the previous number two - the general public having their heads stuck where the sun don't shine!