Letters: Questions about airport security

Re “LAX shooting points up gaps in post-9/11 security,” Nov. 3

Once again a shooting is being used by various vested interests to highlight the need for all sorts of new enhanced security measures and to point out “gaps” in security. This shooter could as easily have decided he had a grudge against Starbucks — would that point to gaps in security at coffee stores?

Simply put, this is an individual with issues who had access to semi-automatic weapons and ammunition, period. There is only one gap here we should be discussing.

Jon Phillips

Torrance

The article highlights the problems in trying to secure Los Angeles International Airport. What is not mentioned is that this airport, which first became a hub for air traffic just after World War II, is now obsolete.

No matter how much LAX is altered and how many valuable homes and businesses are taken, the area is too small for a secure, major international airport.

If Mayor Eric Garcetti truly wants to do something positive for the city, he can initiate a plan to create a new international airport near Palmdale or Lancaster with a high-speed rail connecting it to L.A. Giant new airliners would be better served. Freight could move around, not through, the city. Think of the constructions jobs that would create.

Perhaps then a major airport emergency would not stop traffic movement up and down the coast for hours.

Lorraine Geittmann

Redondo Beach

I do not understand how the tragic death at LAX of one Transportation Security Administration officer, allegedly at the hands of a disturbed young man carrying an assault rifle, provokes an outcry to change security operations at considerable cost and inconvenience.

This, while thousands of children, women and men are killed each month either accidentally or intentionally by the wrongful use of guns or alcohol — and we seem paralyzed to take any manner of useful action to reduce this carnage.

Irving Paul Ackerman

Los Angeles

The only silver lining, if you can call it that, is that the shooter targeted only TSA workers. Had he gone after passengers as well, far more people would have died.

Yes, TSA workers are there only to check passengers, but in today’s world all bases need to be covered. There is no excuse for not having someone right next to the slain TSA agent who was armed.

Security officials need to reexamine their policies and allow for one specially trained TSA agent with a concealed firearm and a bulletproof vest in all terminals.

Joseph B.D. Saraceno

Gardena

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