Are screeners paying attention?

Depends on what they're paying attention to. They're people: can't be focused on everyone everywhere all the time. The fault is with the program: we don't need the TSA, or the Department of Homeland Security, or the PATRIOTAct. If you don't "feel" safe traveling by air, go another way. It is no one else's responsibility to make anyone "feel" safe. It IS the job of our government, Constitutionally, to defend our rights. Invading them, taking them away, violating them, in the name of making some people "feel" safe is not defending any of us. Imagine what safety there would be if we were allotted one armed U.S. Marshal per flight, and each of us were free to carry on our own weapons, including knives. After all, with all the guns and knives that were carried on BEFORE the FAA began its "security" measures, and BEFORE 9/11, what happened? If passengers had been armed on those 9/11 flights, how do you think that morning would have turned out? Do you really feel safer when your Granny is nude-screened? If you do, the problem is with you, not with airline "safety." Freedom is the only guarantee of any kind of "safety." "Anyone who trades freedom for security deserves neither." -- Ben Franklin. Back when everyone was armed if they so chose, and no one thought anything of it. The Revolutionary War was instigated in part by the King's efforts to disarm the American colonists. Do we have to go through it all again?

The screeners at CLT are so fascinated by my electric toothbrush (the cause of several bag checks) that I could smuggle something in my other bag without a peep.