Given sufficient time, nearly anything one can imagine can and will probably happen. But is this sufficient reason to strip everyone of both their dignity and also anything deemed potentially dangerous? Like the OP’s said, it’s the intent that is much more important than the object.
Let a Coke bottle through security, sooner or later some dude is going to use it as a weapon. Same thing applies to knitting needles, pencils, a rolled-up magazine, a pair of hands on a black belt karate master and thousands of other things I could list.
IMO, if we try to plan for every single eventuality then the whole travel system in the US comes to a screeching halt.