Entire generations grew up being able to walk off the street and onto a plane too. And we could carry bottles of drink onboard if we felt like it. And boxcutters and knives.
And if you were nice to the crew, they'd even let you go sit in the cockpit during the flight for a while.
No-one was crashing planes into buildings in those days.
So using your argument, we should do away with bomb scanners and metal detectors at airports, disband the TSA, and instead concentrate on mental illness?
Yes, you are correct that we had a much more peaceful world and a lot more freedom pre-911. Thanks so much to those who forced us to all be treated like criminals at the airports. (sarcasm).
Same with guns. A few do something wrong, and the micromanagers jump to restrict everyone as if we are all children who can't control ourselves, instead of figure out better ways to identify the evildoers.
We would do no worse. The theater isn't actually doing anything:
"
At major airports throughout the United States undercover agents have slipped a shocking number of weapons through security checkpoints during covert exercises conducted randomly since the devastating 2001 terrorist attacks. Reports on the so-called
“red team tests,” are kept secret by the government, but a major news agency got wind of some results and they are downright scary.
In secret tests at major airports such as Los Angeles International and Chicago’s O’Hare, Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) officers missed loaded guns, bombs and other types of explosives in dozens of cases. The recent lapses indicate that little has changed since a 2007 government audit revealed that airport security screeners missed hundreds of fake bombs during tests at three major airports. In those runs, TSA agents in Los Angeles, among the world’s busiest airports, missed 75% of the bogus bombs and screeners at O’Hare missed 60%."
Has it improved since that article: No.
"Just before the crucial and hectic
Thanksgiving holiday travel period, a government watchdog has found the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) missed roughly three out of every four knives, guns, weapons, and mock explosives screened through its airport checkpoints."