HUTCHINSON -- I don’t know why Roberto Rincon brought two loaded handguns with him into Judge Tim Chambers’ Div. 2 courtroom last Friday, but a reasonable guess might be that he intended to shoot someone.

Maybe the judge, maybe the ex-wife, her attorney, maybe he’d just step out in the hallway between the Div. 1 and Div. 2 courtrooms and start blasting away at innocent victims awaiting court appearances.

There were a lot more potential targets than just those people inside Chamber’s courtroom -- he could have, as some nut-cases do, decided to compose himself in the elevator back down to the first floor and turned right and started shooting randomly at YOU standing in the tag line, waiting to register your car.

Frankly, I guess I’d have expected something like this to happen on the 4^th floor, where Judge Patti Macke Dick often has to decide whether to take children away from their parents -- if there’s a frightening potential for emotions to get out of hand, that would be the place, it seems to me.

And I’d like to commend Sheriff Randy Henderson for doing exactly what he should have -- grabbing the guns, marching them down the hallway and slamming them down in front of the county administrator and county counselor and, perhaps between clenched teeth, spitting out, “NOW, do you believe me?”

HUTCHINSON -- Sheriff Randy Henderson's proposal to put metal detectors at the main entrance to Reno County Courthouse is too expensive and won't guarantee the safety of  courthouse employees.

Based on my  23 years working in the  county's Maintenance Department, the building cannot be turned into a secure fortress. Attempting to do so  would hamper the efficiency of  courthouse operations.

Metal detectors have a major defect.  They cannot detect explosives.

The last major threat to the lives of courthouse employees was from a man who threatened to blow himself up with the explosives he was wearing.

Explosive technology has improved since then.  I have heard that people can find a recipe for homemade explosives on the Internet, but haven't been ambitious enough to look for myself.  Apparently full body scanners provide  the only way to prevent someone from bringing  explosives into
an airplane or building.

HUTCHINSON -- It doesn’t hurt, sometimes, to slap me upside the head … to bring me around a little … to remind me why I spent close to 40 years in journalism and why bail-bonding is strictly my necessary “Will work for food” gig.

Because there are stories to be told, that’s why. I don’t know whether you’re entitled to them, or you have the “right to know,” but it doesn’t matter. I believe they need to be told, and, well, on my own website, that settles that.

Back on Feb. 23, 3-month-old Karina Perez of Hutchinson was rushed to the hospital. She couldn’t be saved, and died. Investigators told us, through the newspaper and radio, only that she appeared to die from “unnatural causes.”

An autopsy was scheduled and performed, and once again we were told Karina appeared to die from “unnatural causes.” You can’t get such repetitive, enlightening information just anywhere -- you have to get it from your government.

And we haven’t heard a peep, since. Not from the radio, not from the newspaper, as someone reminded me yesterday. By the time I got back to my car I was indignant, lit-up, wondering (a) just what the hell happened to Karina and (b) why the local media would take “unnatural causes” and happily run with it unless and/or until the government it is supposed to watch decides the public is entitled to an explanation.

You’re not going to like what happened to Karina … not at 3-months-old, you’re not.

She was, literally, cooked.

Someone, believing she was cold, wanted to warm her up, so they held a hair-dryer on her. And it cooked her.