Originally Posted by VelvetJones

I never understood this obsession by the flying public and the TSA with potential bombs. If the only goal is to take down the plane why even bother getting on it? US airports are generally not protected in any way. You can get right next to runways at almost every major airport. It would be much easier to simply shoot a plane down then to try and sneak past a cat bomb or other such nonsense. Yet to this day no one has even attempted it in the US, and there have been very few attempts world wide. Why is that oh paranoid among us? If there is a terrorist hiding around every corner and in every cat carrier then why the lack of even attempts in the US?