I certainly hope it's not making a comeback. At YYC (Calgary, Canada) I recently got chosen for the dreaded gate check. I mentioned to the person checking me (who likely wouldn't have even found a lit stick of dynamite in my bag) that in the U.S., they had stopped this ridiculous process some time back. The screener had no idea that U.S. airports were no longer doing it.

At my home airport, I was chosen at random while passing through security for an additional screening. I asked the TSA agent if they had ever caught anyone trying to actually pull off something illegal. He quite happily told me he himself caught a man trying to hide his pocketknife behind his belt. When I continued discussing it with him, he admitted that the guy had no intentions of doing anything bad, simply wanted to no lose his knife that he hadn't packed in his bag.