Americans worry about terrorists infiltrating our borders from offshore and wreaking havoc. But last week's mall shooting (as well as Church shootings in Colorado) again reinforces how vulnerable we are to garden variety All-American nut jobs who get their hands on guns and spread easy carnage, making for lurid coverage on CNN and FOX. And as we know in the gun-friendly USA anybody from mental cases to you or me can find or buy an AK47 and ammo clips to do ugly deeds without much trouble. So last March it was Virginia Tech, last week it was Omaha, a few years ago Columbine. No one wants to deal with the gun menace so more indiscriminate mass killings will certainly happen like the West Roads mall tragedy. And if mental cases can spray gun fire around a mall, well how easy would it be for a terrorist or group of terrorists? Forget about dirty bombs. And let's face it, mall owners can do very little to stop people of any stripe who want to commit mayhem. The cars with yellow lights patrolling the parking lots won't stop them. Will shoppers put up with metal detectors at mall entrances?

Now more than six years post 9/11, only a handful of office buildings around the country still undertake airport-like visitor checks, mostly in the handful of global business centers (San Francisco, West LA, Chicago, DC), and predominantly in Manhattan headquarters towers. The x-ray screenings and/or instant picture ids with bar codes are leftover trappings from the 2001 events, and a nice boon for security and rent-a-guard firms. Class A owners in these prime markets need some semblance of "high tech" security to stay competitive, but I never have figured out who or what they were trying to stop from getting upstairs. I guess the security schemes give some level of comfort to tenants and I bet these buildings report far lower incidences of pocketbook thefts and other petty crimes than lower security buildings. While the riff-raff certainly can't easily get into elevator banks anymore, Bruce Willis or 24-style terrorists most definitely can. Like the TSA, these systems hardly appear fail safe. Just last week, a security guard in one high-profile bank-branded skyscraper eased me through without a complete check and I got into a reception at a new "media" tower without much of a review either, although the guard programmed my floor destination into the elevator computer controls. In another building my laptop bag was x-rayed, but I didn't go through a metal detector.

Whether in malls, office buildings, or just walking down a street, I'd be more concerned about all the "ordinary" Americans toting around guns than the next (inevitable) terrorist sortie. Maybe I should pick up an AK47 or Uzi to protect myself.