host: david maurer from the department of, and security office. we're looking at homeland security grants for states. they have been around for a decade now, since 2002. the dhs has per -- has offered states money to respond and recover from terrorist incidents. we were talking about the high- tech device the columbus, ohio god. and would also see in montgomery, -- that ohio got. and we also see in montgomery county, texas, a drone. if you have a drone that goes under water, like in columbus, and it can be done to aid in an underwater search and rescue event, it might not be related to terrorism. guest: many of these things are designed to be what dhs calls "all hazards. or they could be used to respond to a terrorist incident, but also to search and rescue and abroad for some purposes. there multi-purpose, in many cases. -- they are multi-purpose in many cases. when dhs makes the decisions to provide the money, they do not know specifically what the money is going to be spent for. the local community may communicate through the city government th

government accountability -- and david maurer with the government accountability office. thank you for your time today. that is all for "washington journal" today. thank you for turning in. later on, the house will be in at 12:00 p.m. for morning hours and then [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> here's a look at what is happening today. oming up, a look at egypt's constitutional referendum. we'll have a live on c-span to at 10:30 eastern -- on c-span2. we will focus on two stay today. we're in columbus, ohio and later we'll of taped coverage of the meeting in north carolina. beckett's underway at noon eastern on c-span3. rely that 12:15 with a discussion on raising the medicare eligibility age. you can watch it on c-span2. >> we want to beat on every device or every person at every hour of the day. we're a mobile society. the challenge is to make sure we're on pads, computers, phones, as well as in the traditional living room on the high-definition television screen. the other challenge is th

join the conversation and talked to david maurer about a homeland security grants to states, here are the numbers to call. what formula did the grant programs follow went looking to get out the money? what do they have to do? guest: it varies from program to program, but generally speaking, as a first cut, dhs takes into consideration the risk. in other words, it wants to provide the money more toward portions of the country where there is a greater risk of attack or natural disaster. secondly, we look at capabilities. how capable are the state and local governments already. those that are less capable should get additional funding. and third, they look of the types of project that they are applying for. one of the interesting thing about the third step isthe state and local governments do not apply untypically for specific projects, but sometimes a package of projects. -- typically for specific projects but sometimes a package host: jim in indiana on the democrat's line. caller: i'm wondering, since this past school shooting why we are not able to aggressively put metal detectors bef