Is LAX shooting the result of anti-government hatred?

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Los Angeles Airport Police Department Officer Fritz Corros stands in silence as an honor guard at the makeshift memorial to fallen TSA Officer Gerardo Hernandez. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

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Transportation Security Administration employees observe a moment of silence on Friday at 9:20 a.m., the same time of last Friday’s shooting that left TSA Officer Gerardo Hernandez dead. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

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Los Angeles Airport police Officer Fritz Corros stands in silence as an honor guard at the makeshift memorial to fallen TSA Officer Gerardo Hernandez. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

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TSA employees embrace after observing a moment of silence at LAX. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

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Airport workers embrace in Terminal 3 after a memorial service for a slain TSA officer. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

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A shoulder patch is among the items at the makeshift memorial for slain TSA Officer Gerardo Hernandez. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

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LAX Airport Police officer Tom Dye passes the U.S. Honor Flag to TSA honor guard Brandy Richards as it arrives at LAX in memory of TSA agent Gerardo Hernandez on Wednesday. The Honor Flag will be used at Hernandez’s upcoming funeral services. (Brad Graverson / Getty Images)

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Honor guards escort a U.S. National Honor Flag from an airline jet in a ceremony to memorialize TSA Officer Gerardo Hernandez, who was fatally shot at LAX. (David McNew / Getty Images)

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The U.S. Honor Flag is carried during a procession through Terminal 4 at LAX in memory of TSA agent Gerardo Hernandez. (Brad Graverson / Getty Images)

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A motorcade, consisting of members of the L.A. Police Department, L.A. Fire Department, and honor guards with the Transportation Security Administration, carries a U.S. National Honor Flag in memory of TSA Officer Gerardo Hernandez. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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A TSA officer wipes her eyes as an honor guard escorts a U.S. National Honor Flag in a ceremony to memorialize TSA Officer Gerardo Hernandez, who was fatally shot at LAX. (David McNew / Getty Images)

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TSA agents Blandina Beltran,left, and Wessane Legesse, right, comfort each other at a candlelight vigil for their co-worker slain TSA agent Gerardo I. Hernandez at Dockweiler State Beach on November 4, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. Beltran and Legesse both work in Terminal 3 at LAX. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

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TSA shooting victim Tony Grigsby is consoled by his mother, Faye Maye, during a news conference Monday n Los Angeles. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

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TSA shooting victim Tony Grigsby, escorted by his mother, Faye Maye, left, and grandmother Juanita Davis, walks slowly away from the media after a press conference Monday in Los Angeles. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

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Passengers continue through the screening area in LAX Terminal Three on Monday morning. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Transportation Security Administration agents help travelers with baggage to check for screening at LAX Terminal Two on Monday morning after a deadly shooting Friday at Terminal Three caused mass delays and cancellations. A Transportation Security Administration agent was killed and several other people were wounded when a gunman opened fire in the Los Angeles International Airport terminal Friday morning. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Transportation Security Administration agents embrace in front of Terminal 3 at LAX on Monday. Three days after a fellow agent was killed and several others wounded. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Transportation Security Administration agents help travelers with their luggage. Suspect Paul Anthony Ciancia’s family family notified Los Angeles police Friday morning after receiving text messages from the 23-year-old that made them concerned about his well-being. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Passengers and Transportation Security Administration walk past a memorial of flowers at LAX on Monday morning. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Flowers for slain TSA agent Gerardo Hernandez at LAX Terminal 3. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Los Angeles Airport Police Officer Dan Keehne and his canine partner keep an eye on passengers in Terminal 3. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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TSA officers are in very somber mood at the Terminal 3 check-in area. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

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Ana Hernandez, widow of slain TSA officer Gerardo I. Hernandez, makes a statement Saturday. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

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Airport police Officer Dan Keehne patrols Terminal 3 with his canine partner. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Travelers wait to check in as construction workers take down tarp that prevented people from looking at the crime scene. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Los Angeles airport staff members attend to a passenger who was trying get in through a closed entrance at Terminal 3. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

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Los Angeles Airport police patrol with dogs in Terminal 3 a day after the shooting. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

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TSA agents spend a quiet moment on a bridge that leads to Terminal 3. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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A TSA agent is absorbed in thought as he walks through Terminal 3 at Los Angeles International Airport. (Genaro Molina/ Los Angeles Times)

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Law enforcement including the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Fire Department and LAX Airport Police gather in Terminal 3 at Los Angeles International Airport. A Transportation Security Administration agent was killed and several other people were wounded when a gunman opened fire at the airport. The attack caused widespread chaos, delaying flights and stranding thousands of passengers. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

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Liza Espiritu, right, rests on her luggage while joining hundreds of passengers who wait to get permission to try to make their flights. Espiritu and her husbvand, Eric, standing behind her, were traveling from Manila with a stop at LAX en route to Phoenix. (Genaro Molina/ Los Angeles Times)

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After hours of waiting, passengers are allowed to enter LAX. They were held at the entrance to the arrival section of LAX. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Travelers make their toward LAX on one of the main roads into the airport. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Joseph Heyward, 87, right, and his wife get help with their luggage and a ride from Los Angeles firefighters. (Genaro Molina/ Los Angeles Times)

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Passengers wait outside Terminal 1 at Los Angeles International Airport on Nov. 1, 2013, after a Transportation Security Administration agent was shot and killed and three other people were wounded when a gunman opened fire in Terminal 3. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck talks with other responders at Los Angeles International Airport. (Reed Saxon / Associated Press)

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The attack at LAX caused widespread chaos at the airport, with flights delayed and thousand of passengers left stranded on the streets in and around the airport. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Security presence outside Terminal 2 at LAX after a Transportation Security Administration agent was shot and several other people were wounded when a gunman opened fire in Terminal 3 Friday morning. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Passengers wait outside Terminal 1 at LAX. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Passengers and airline personnel exit LAX after a Transportation Security Administration agent was shot and killed. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Passengers wait for Terminal 1 to reopen after a shooting at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday. (Ringo H.W. Chiu / Associated Press)

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A passenger trundles his bag behind him outside LAX, where thousands of people were evacuated after a gunman opened fire in Terminal 3. (Michael Nelson / EPA)

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A police offer stretches crime scene tape across the road leading to Terminal 3 after Friday morning’s shooting. (Michael Nelson / EPA)

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Police stand guard outside Terminal 2 at Los Angeles International Airport. (Ringo H.W. Chiu / Associated Press)

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Passengers evacuated from LAX terminals walk with their luggage after a gunman opened fire inside Terminal 3. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

By Robin Abcarian

Nov. 4, 2013 5:47 PM PT

Here are some of the places we expect to be safe:

Airports. Military bases. Movie theaters. Elementary school classrooms. Grocery stores. Places of worship. Marathon finish lines.

But we aren’t, and as Friday’s shooting at LAX reminds us, it doesn’t really matter where a security perimeter starts.

There is always a place outside it. There is almost always a way to get inside. A crazy guy with an assault rifle or a terrorist with a homemade bomb will find a way to wreak havoc before he is killed or kills himself.

It’s depressing, but there is probably no way to fully protect the public against people like 23-year-old Paul Anthony Ciancia, who, according to the FBI, was carrying a duffel bag with a handwritten note indicating “his anger and malice” toward TSA agents.

This is what we have to understand, and acknowledge: We live in a society where guns that are designed to kill as many human beings in as short a time as possible are not just widely available, but are equated with liberty itself.

Until our policymakers find the courage to defy the gun lobby, that’s just how it is.

In the meantime, as the investigation into last week’s carnage and disruption at LAX continues, and the family of Gerardo Hernandez, the first TSA agent to be killed in the line of duty, grapples with their loss, some have speculated that his death is a result of forces greater than a single individual with disordered thinking.

As my colleague Brian Bennett reported over the weekend, some experts think the rampage was a symptom of “growing antipathy toward government workers and TSA personnel in particular.”

“Specialists on hate crimes and union officials decried what they said was a general atmosphere of mockery and derision toward TSA agents that they said is amplified by late-night talk show hosts, politicians and news media,” Bennett wrote. “‘When people or institutions are vilified on national television and in the public square, you often see people latch on to them as enemies to be destroyed,’ Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in an interview.”

On Monday, I asked Potok to elaborate.

“I’m not trying to make the case that every time a public person says something ugly someone gets killed, but words have consequences,” Potok said.

He recalled a 2010 incident in which a heavily armed man was arrested in Oakland after a shootout with CHP officers who had tried to pull him over for driving erratically. According to authorities, the man was wearing body armor, was carrying at least three weapons and said he intended to kill “people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU.”

The Tides Foundation is an obscure but influential progressive nonprofit organization. According to its 2008 annual report, it focuses on “women’s rights and reproductive justice, health services and health reform, environmental issues, economic and racial justice, LGBT issues and global work on HIV/AIDS.” The liberal financier George Soros, a favorite right-wing target, has been a major donor.

“Hardly anyone knew what the Tides Foundation was,” said Potok. “Come to find out, it had been singled out by Glenn Beck on the air over and over again. That’s what we see all the time.”

Few people who fly regularly are not conflicted about the passenger screening procedures forced on us in the aftermath of 9/11. For many, passing through a TSA checkpoint has become an exercise in ritual, if minor, humiliation. It’s always a little bit awful to be forced to partially disrobe in front of strangers or made to feel vulnerable in the scanners. But we do it because we want to be safe.
TSA agents occasionally go overboard, and in the age of the instant meme, criticizing them has become something of a cottage industry. (“Don’t touch my junk,” anyone?) They are critiqued on anonymous, knowledgeable blogs.

They are also the victims of fake stories and now, tragically, real violence.

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