Where are all the guns in Sochi?

I don’t know if Brennan is a liberal, but if he is, this article is very ironic:

SOCHI  How is it possible that I’ve been at the Olympics for 24 hours, and I haven’t seen a gun?

Not a rifle, or a pistol, or any sign of any weapon or show of force from the people charged with protecting the most worried-about place on earth.

At the figure skating venue, a security officer just inside the main entry point for those with credentials barely looked up when two of us stepped inside late Tuesday afternoon, so focused was he on a video playing loudly on his smartphone. I was holding a half-full bottle of water in plain sight in my hand, expecting that he or someone else would ask me not to bring it into the venue, like at airport security — but no one said a thing, so in it went.

We then roamed the Iceberg Skating Palace basically at will for 20 minutes, passing just a few volunteers who smiled and said hello but didn’t examine our credentials — this little more than 48 hours before the first event of the Olympics takes place there, the opening night of the team figure skating competition Thursday.

This is not to say the Olympic venues are not secure. Credentials are required and scanned when you come and when you go, at the main media center, at the figure skating venue and presumably at every other venue. Police and military officers are said to be disguised as volunteers — and there are a lot of volunteers.

But for those of us used to seeing massive shows of force at the Olympic Games and at major American sports events, the lack of that here, at least so far, is stunning.

At the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, every media bus was boarded by an armed security detail before it was allowed near the media center, with mirrors checking under each bus.

On my first trip to the media center Tuesday on a bus from the nearby media village, there was no such check of the bus or its passengers. You might think that’s because we were screened at the media village, but when I arrived there in the early morning hours Tuesday, two people were sitting at the entrance in pitch-black darkness, and neither one looked at my credential or my luggage.

Nothing was screened. I just walked right on in unchecked with my bags to a media village within about a mile of the Olympics’ sprawling and beautiful Coastal Cluster, which includes the stadium that will host Friday night’s opening ceremony.

The Sochi we have heard about for weeks in the United States is quite different from the Sochi I entered at midnight Monday. It’s not foreboding. It’s not frightening. It seems like just another city hosting another big sporting event, with no apparent tension, no frayed nerves.

What a far cry this is from the last Olympics that worried us so, the 2004 Games in Athens, the first Summer Olympics after Sept. 11. Vans, cars and buses were checked in special stations at those Olympics, with mirrors examining underneath each vehicle, just as in London. Guards armed with machine guns stood at media bus stops and roamed the venues.

We hear there are 40,000 police and soldiers in Sochi, a city of 350,000. No doubt many of them are armed. But the fact that the authorities have not made a point of letting us see even a hint of that force around the Olympic venues, at least on a first look around, is a big surprise.

I did see my first soldier, dressed in camouflage, walking through a parking lot outside the figure skating venue at dusk Tuesday. His left hand was in his pocket. His right hand was reaching for something in another pocket. I kept watching.

He pulled out a cell phone and answered a call.
Copyright 2014 USATODAY.com
Source: http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/usatoday/article/5204579&usatref=sportsmod