Walking down the main aisle in a Target store last week, I noticed one of the end displays designed to entice impulse buyers. It wasn't flashy, sexy or edible like most of the unnecessary stuff that somehow finds its way into my cart. What caught my attention was its unusual bulky shape, hulking just one item to a shelf.

It was an emergency preparedness kit ostensibly a giant box with stuff the average four-person family might need in a disaster. The box had batteries, lights, ponchos and first-aid supplies for a cool $29.99.

Just like everything else when it comes to homeland security in Nevada these days, the onus is all on you to protect yourself.

Government here, like in much of the nation, learned plenty from Sept. 11, 2001, but still hasn't implemented changes to make life safer. I'm thrilled I can buy $3-a-bottle water now near the gates at McCarran instead of filling up an empty plastic bottle at home from my dispenser and packing it in my carry-on. And isn't 3 ounces of a bunch of different liquids stored neatly in a quart-sized bag enough to carry out the foiled cross-Atlantic plot? Every iPod, cellphone and BlackBerry, I suppose, could be hiding a detonation device.

But airport security has always been a lost cause. What about the real efforts in Nevada post-9/11 to make us safer?

In 2003, the leaders of both legislative houses pursued sweeping homeland security legislation. Early drafts, dubbed Nevada's Patriot Act, were as offensive as the national version. Eventually the softened language passed in Richard Perkins' Assembly Bill 441 was hyped as the biggest public safety improvement in decades. It created the Homeland Security Commission and required casinos to submit big disaster preparedness plans, among many, many other things.

One provision was the "continuity of government" idea to provide a means of allowing government to work, if say, a plane was crashed into the Legislative Building during floor sessions, wiping out most of the 63 lawmakers. Perkins, the Assembly speaker, said because most people believe the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 was headed for the Capitol or White House, the scenario had real applicability in Nevada.

Too bad they didn't figure out a solution much more advanced than having one of the constitutional officers, for example, sit out the biennial State of the State address.

The new state controller, Steve Martin -- not the wild and crazy one -- has submitted a bill draft providing for continuity in state financial administration in the event of the incapacity of a constitutional officer. It wasn't an act of terrorism -- at least we don't think it was -- that took Controller Kathy Augustine from us this summer. But Martin said Augustine's death -- a full three years after the homeland security bill passed -- created disarray because no one else was authorized to sign the 16,000 payroll and other checks in the office.

His bill draft will allow another constitutional officer, except for the treasurer who has to provide a secondary signature on all checks anyway, to sign for the controller in the event of any similar untimely departure.

Usually when security comes up on the campaign trail, it comes only under the specter of immigration. There's no real talk about whether we're safer in Nevada five years later.

Still, after millions of grant dollars flowed here to let our first responders talk to each other across county lines or on radios across the street, we still haven't solved the "interoperability" thing. We wouldn't need a terrorist act -- just an earthquake or a major wildfire -- to end up as impotent as New Orleans was when the levees broke and flooded the city.

No one's really talking about which gubernatorial candidate, for example, will make us safer. Maybe it's assumed that Top Gun Jim Gibbons has won that vote, what with his reminders that he "took enemy fire" in the Gulf War.

I have yet to have it explained how someone flying an RF-4C, an unarmed photo reconnaissance plane routinely flown at 50,000 feet, took fire.

But that's exactly how Nevada largely treats securing its homeland -- with a lot of energy, way above the problem and with little impact on the ground.

If Gibbons, who wrote legislation that helped craft the federal Homeland Security Department, had been more aggressive watching that beast, he might somehow have convinced the bureaucrats not to slash our funding.

If Islamic jihadists want to really draw Asia into their sights, they've got plenty of opportunity to make a mark here in Las Vegas. Nine of out 10 Chinese visitors to the United States come here to Las Vegas. Seventeen of the 20 largest hotels in the country are on the Strip.

The government tells us a "certain percentage" of cargo shipped aboard planes is screened.

I'm certainly not impressed.

Las Vegas still looks like one of the best targets out there. And with the red bull's eye offering me security for 30 bucks plus tax, I feel so much better. At least it has a poncho. We all know how often that will come in handy here.

Erin Neff's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 387-2906 or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.