Keller @ Large: We Are Still Very Vulnerable

BOSTON (CBS) - I turned on the TV this weekend and caught the end of a re-broadcast of the greatest basketball game ever played, the Celtics' triple overtime win over Phoenix in Game 5 of the 1976 NBA Finals.

You may recall that at the end of the second overtime, when it appeared that the Celtics had won the game on a last-second shot, fans rushed onto the court, and one of them attacked one of the referees. The announcers were dumbstruck. "I've never seen anything like that happen before," shouted one of them.

Nowadays, of course, the fans wouldn't be allowed to storm the court, in part because it's far from unthinkable that a violent idiot would attack an official.

Consider the full array of modern-day violence we've been treated to in the past few days.

Apparent gang violence taking an innocent local high school student's life; a promising young singer assassinated by, most likely, a mentally ill stranger; and Sunday's horror in that Orlando nightclub, probably yet another case of deranged terrorism by an Islamist extremist.

And all the security measures in the world can't prevent the carnage.

Since so many of the 9/11 mass murderers passed through Logan Airport, it has become one of the safer airports in the world thanks to millions of dollars in security spending. But that didn't keep Boston safe from terrorism, did it?

I don't have an answer, just a suggestion – that we fully acknowledge how vulnerable we still are, how little we really know about how to stop it, and how quaint those long-ago days of 1976 seem now.

Listen to Jon's commentary: