How about just seeing if they are carrying a bomb? The additional scope creep reduces the chance of a bomb being detected.
Sure, a trained person can probably kill with dental floss, but nowadays between the armored cockpits and the willingness of passengers to swarm a bad guy the risks of anything but a bomb are pretty low.
Yeah, it could well be the case that our scanning technology has improved to the point that we can efficiently screen everyone without any need to single out people that get flagged. Then again, there was also lots of resistance to the introduction of this improved scanning tech too (people seeing blurry monochrome outline of human genitalia is apparently a major civil rights violation). It seems like people are in opposition even to improvements in the screening process that make it more effective, and therefore fairer (less need to single flagged people out for a pat down).
Sure, a trained person can probably kill with dental floss, but nowadays between the armored cockpits and the willingness of passengers to swarm a bad guy the risks of anything but a bomb are pretty low.